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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And don't forget, he hasn't even taken the ADAM yet.

He's already tired to the point of just wanting to sit the fuck down, so when there's a laugh and a spurt of flame behind him, he kind of gets set on fire a little. He has a tonic that puts it out fast, but still, ow. He yells in pain and retaliates with fire of his own, earning an answering scream -- then has to sidestep fast as ice blasts at him from the other direction.

Jack pockets the negligibly-filled syringe, swaps it out for the shotgun and blasts one of them through the -- shitfuck, she teleported away. He puts the electric buck through the spider instead, who's put himself out and is limping determinedly towards the ADAM puddle. Was limping determinedly towards the ADAM puddle.

No yeah you're still good. You've got this, Sinclair believes in you Jack. He's just gonna stay right over here.

Although he's holding that chemical thrower just a little bit closer than he was before. Just in case. That's one splicer down and two particularly tricky ones to go. The houdinis always make him nervous. If one teleports to the wrong place, they're going to see him and then he'll get to use this thing.

I mean he'll have to use this thing.

And that would be terrible.

"I got here first, parasite!" shrieks the female splicer -- the one with the burning hands -- at the other.

He retorts with a stuttering "Don't cheat me! The blood -- the blood is mine!"

It would be nice if they'd act on their squabble and start attacking each other instead, but they both seem to have pinpointed Jack as the bigger threat. So while they're not really coordinating their efforts, they aren't making things easier for him with in-fighting either. Of course.

He gets the ice-wielding guy with a shotgun blast -- and he'd press the attack, but that was his last round of electric buck, and the houdini has time to curse and teleport away. Before the blue cloud has even gone, Jack feels a searing pain in his back and stumbles forwards -- on fire again.

As he falls forwards, he spins, turns it into a fall against the wall that douses the flames -- thank contraband God for wet stone -- and he grits his teeth -- who knows if he's more in pain or angry at this point; he's a lot of both -- and throws fire at the woman. Who vanishes with a laugh.

"Come back here!" he bellows, his voice ragged-edged from pain.

He searches in his pocket for a med kit -- and finds nothing. He used up his last in the Big Daddy fight.

Well. This just got especially serious.

The man appears again in his blue fucking cloud, and he starts to yell something but fuck him, Jack may be exhausted and injured but he can still move, and so the houdini's taunt turns into screams as he's set alight. He still hasn't reloaded the shotgun, so Jack zaps the guy to keep him in place and finishes him off with the wrench. The good old standby.

Whoosh. Crackle.

...Jack's on fire again.

And this time he really does stumble, yells, goes shoulder-first into the wall as his vision swims.

No really though, you've got this Jack. You...you don't have this. Alright.

Sinclair watches as Jack trips over himself into the wall, oblivious to everything but his pain. With which Sinclair sympathizes, and while he wishes his priority could be to find Jack a med kit ASAP, the danger's not done here.

The final splicer cackles delightedly, taunting Jack in a sing song voice. And as she approaches him, Sinclair takes a deep breath, steps out from around the corner

and unloads the canister of napalm. It's a lot harder to miss when you can see the entire path your ammo is traveling.

The houdini splicer lets out an ear splitting scream before something final happens and she shuts up forever. Her crisp corpse lies still on the ground, and Sinclair thinks if he kicked it, it might turn to ashes.

...Maybe later.

For now, Jack isn't really looking so good.

He drops the chemical thrower by the wall and kneels beside him.

"You good to walk, or do you want me to find you a kit?"

Jack's fire goes out after a few endless seconds, but ow. Ow. Ow. Life is pain. His body feels like pork looks when it roasts. But he's still turning around, blinded by pain, and lifting his hand--

--as the splicer starts to scream. Not a scream of triumph. A scream of pain. And he realises she's dying.

And then the person in front of him is Sinclair.

He stares. His eyes are watering, cutting through the smoke that's blackened his face.

Sinclair totally killed that houdini, didn't he?

...Actually, he'll worry about being impressed and grateful when he is not slowly dying.

Jack lowers his hand, slowly. It takes a bit of concentration and motor control. The fire has eaten through his skin but not cauterised, leaving bloody patches, angry red blisters. And burns hurt, it's like being stabbed on every inch of his body, over and over.

"C'n walk."

So ignore the slurring.

"H'lp me look?"

Sinclair nods and immediately goes to the splicer he just torched. Time to test that theory!

He looks it over for a moment before reaching out and nudging it with his foot.

...It doesn't have quite the predicted effect, but she is a whole lot skinnier when he pushes her onto her back.

This one lacks any med kits, but she is carrying an EVE hypo.

"Hey, kid," Sinclair says, holding it up for Jack to see. "Need this?"

Jack is crouched by the other houdini, the one with a buckshot hole in his stomach. No health kit here either, just a few dollars and a pep bar that's already disappearing down Jack's dried-up throat.

He grunts in assent, pulls the hypo into his hand with telekinesis, and pockets it. At least the burn wounds don't extend all the way onto his palms. But he's not keen on sticking more needles into himself than he has to while his arms look like this.

Wow Jack, didn't anyone ever teach you it's rude to snatch? Your fake mother is shaking her head in disappointment right now.

Sinclair looks around the room again, searching for anywhere else a med kit might be stashed. And then he spies the Bouncer armor on the other side of the room.

Hahaaa jackpot.

He crouches down beside it and checks the few compartments where extra equipment can be kept, but all he finds is about $100 in cash and a brass tube.

Well that's useless.

He pockets the cash and returns to Jack's side, shrugging and shaking his head to convey his empty-handedness.

Meanwhile, Jack pushes himself to his feet and moves over to the spider splicer. He prefers not to be moving around injured and in pain, but it's not like it's an alien concept, and he can push through it. More worrying are the parts of his body that don't hurt, the ones that have been seared free of nerve endings and might be bleeding him to death for all he knows.

Jesus. Just keep going, this one's a crawler, even if he doesn't have a traditional health kit Jack can get something equivalent.

This guy didn't really have time for his burns to start healing, so he's just... red. Stippled. Flesh like volcanic rock. Jack delves into his pockets with roughly negative amounts of respect for the dead.

"No kits," he groans. Half to inform Sinclair; half because, sigh, here's one more bony barrier between him and healing items.

He sighs and powers up the stabbing icicles of Winter Blast. Starts cutting into the guy's stomach, much as he would a Little Sister's. Man. The next knife he sees, he's taking it with him, because wow these things are sharp but they're really not built to slice.

Jack says the words, but something about it seems less than final.

"I think I saw a health station back a few rooms, if you w--"

He lets the words taper off as Jack tears into the splicer's stomach, sinking his hands in like he's about to catch a fish.

Sinclair's expression is one of mild disgust and equally as mild amusement. It's gross, but it's also absurd in the sense that a few years ago, Sinclair never would have imagined himself in a situation where he was going to watch someone pull the heart out of a fresh kill to eat. Especially considering that the fresh kill is human. Sort of.

It's like a bad ghost story, but it's real. Only in Rapture, he sighs.

Hey, at least he cooked it first.

Perhaps I should have more correctly said abdomen -- he bypasses the stomach, which he's getting really good at locating by now, and shoves up and through the broad gap at the bottom of the ribcage. He has to grit his teeth a lot, because he's basically shoving all the burn sores on his arm through fresh carcass, but like I said. Pain. Working through it. He's familiar.

Getting through a heart requires a fair amount of chewing. It's not impenetrable, but it's tough like a mussel, and there's probably a pun I could make on that fact but it's late so I won't. And there's not exactly a chance to wash it, so the overriding flavour is blood -- metallic, harshly rich.

Jack breathes a bit easier as his wounds begin to heal.

A few moments later, about halfway through the organ, he can turn himself round without too much hurt and sit himself down on the splicer's corpse. He nods up at Sinclair as he chews, an 'all okay' kind of gesture. There's blood running in generous rivers down his chin and throat and into the neck of his sweater.

I mean he knows you don't do shit like this on the surface, but he still doesn't see a particular problem with it, and presumably Sinclair feels the same way, right?

Absolutely, there's nothing particularly wrong with the situation. It's more just the improbability of it when you're used to how things work on the surface.

He might even be more upset by that sweater Jack he just washed it, are you serious. Do you need a napkin or something.

But it's helping him feel better, and Sinclair can breathe a little easier knowing Jack's in good enough shape to keep going. He can't remember where he saw the last Vita Chamber, and waiting for Jack to find him again could be just as dangerous as going to try and find Jack. It's altogether more convenient if Jack just doesn't die.

On that note.

"We need to keep moving, kid. I'm sure there's more where they came from."

Jack swallows the final mouthful of his hearty meal. He's still a bit battered and bruised, but those open wounds are so healed that you don't even know.

God, it feels so much better already.

Of course, his spirits aren't allowed to be raised for long, as his eyes go to the puddle of ADAM. Or... to what used to be the puddle of ADAM. It's been stepped in, run through, splashed about, trodden into shoes and into the cracks of the stone. The stain's still visible but there's no way he's getting any more of it up.

Instead of answering Sinclair, he swears under his breath.

Jack's gaze leads to the puddle he'd been trying to suck up into his needle and isn't that just in the true spirit of Rapture? Find a thing that everybody wants and in the process of fighting over it, they trample the value right out of it.

But Sinclair did make a promise earlier.

"We'll find you an alternative, okay chief? We'll figure out how to get you more, but right now we gotta keep truckin'. That there should tide you over until we find more."

He has no idea how they're going to do that, unless Jack rescues enough little sisters to eventually equal what he would have normally gotten otherwise. But that second conversation with Tenenbaum is looking more and more extremely necessary.

"Okay," says Jack, but his voice is just barely on this side of vengeful. He's got the syringe out of his pocket and he's trying to guesstimate how much might be in it -- forty, maybe fifty ADAM? It would have been more if those fucking splicers hadn't shown up -- he's not really in a position to kick the one he's sitting on but the sentiment is there.

He shoots up the ADAM anyway, and shudders. It's a relief, but a small one. A negligible burn.

He is so mad at Tenenbaum right now you have no idea.

It's clearly not the boost Jack was hoping for, but it's better than nothing. His hands keep still and he looks a little more relaxed, if still pretty irritated. He's handling it better than a full blown splicer would, and that's what counts.

"After you," Sinclair says, stepping back to let Jack decide their direction.

And then... the next several hours are searching. Lengthy, fruitless searching, while machinery boils and buzzes above and around them, and splicers cackle and sing to themselves -- not always from a distance. Jack is some definition of tireless, dispatching them when they come too close and leaving no cake or pep-bar uneaten. But he moves more heavily and answers more shortly than he did a day or two before. Even after they find and rescue another little sister.

So far today, from several hours and two Bouncer fights, he's spliced nearly what he would from a single harvest. Yesterday, half of that. The day before that was just a single harvest, and he can't believe how much it's dropped from his first couple of days when he was running around half-mad from ten harvests or more. He can't believe how quickly he got used to that.

It's kind of scary. Scratch that, it's really scary, and that just makes his mood worse. He wishes he'd never realised it.

Sinclair asked about doors, huh? There are plenty of those. Doors leading to hallways leading to rooms, but none of them leading to a dock or a place that might hide a submarine. The lower levels exhausted, their search moves gradually back upstairs, until eventually they find...

...themselves back in the trophy room, surrounded by Ryan's congregation of worms.

Hours and hours of effort and coming up dry...Sinclair's not completely unfamiliar with how that goes. Sometimes it's just a necessary step towards getting results.

That doesn't make it any less frustrating.

When they're faced again with the collection of bodies, pinned up on the wall like sigils, Sinclair has to sit down and take a breather.

After a moment of letting the strain dissipate from his calves, he looks over at Jack.

"We'll find something in Ryan's office. He's got something up there, I know it. We won't walk away from this empty-handed."

Jack's leaning against that empty pillar, resting the back of his head against the cold stone. He's not tired, exactly. But his anger and worry have drained into apathy and he really doesn't know if that's better or worse than before.

But at least he's not as reluctant to go near Ryan's office as he was this morning. Memories schmemories... he just wants to get this search finished with some, any, degree of success, and then go back to Olympus Heights and hibernate.

"Alright."

Sinclair keeps his eyes on Jack a few seconds longer, trying to assess whether or not he's alright to keep going or if they should give it a few more minutes.

"Think you'll make it? Or do you want to look for another Sister?"

"I'll make it," says Jack, as if he doesn't understand why the question would even be asked. He's made it this far; of course he'll make it.

He's made it all the way through physical trauma and through highs and lows of awful emotion. Just being a bit listless doesn't count.

(The tremor is creeping back into his hands, almost invisible for now.)

Jack sounds almost offended; his humor's obviously growing shorter. Not a good sign, but Sinclair's always been pretty good at tempering a disagreeable demeanor. As long as Jack keeps away from any sort of violent reactions, they're in the clear.

So Sinclair follows Jack out of the trophy room, down the hall and through a couple bulkheads before he recognizes where he is again. At the end of a short corridor lies the control center of Rapture. It's looking a little neglected, which is something Sinclair might worry about if he didn't have plans to be out of here in the next day or so. Somebody else can figure out how to make sure this city keeps running. Or not. Once he's out of here, the whole population can drown for all he cares. In fact, he hopes the whole population drowns. The tiny fraction that doesn't deserve to die will then at least be put out of their misery.

But it's darker here than he's used to, even in Persephone. Maybe it's because they're deeper down, or maybe it's the red cast on the room from the volcano.

He's got a good feeling about this place. They're close.

"We can skim this place first and then head up to the office, if you want."

"I've looked around this room before."

Pretty thoroughly, in fact. Had something to do with the one and only other door, the one that he thought was the only way to Ryan until he found that loose grate. If there was a way to a sub here he would have found it.

The room's only a wall's thickness away. Jack's tense, as if expecting an attack, even though they can see from here that there are no splicers in the room.

"I'll... try and open the door. You can look."

Sinclair nods his concurrence and takes off for the wall in the opposite direction from where Jack goes. It's lined with control panels and desks, buttons and knobs and lights that mean next to nothing to Sinclair, but if he can spot any kind of departure from the typical, that's all he needs. Something that stands out.

Meanwhile Jack heads for the door, the one that was busted beyond trespass last time he was here, and finds--

--it's open.

Not wide open, not even visibly open until he gets close and starts examining it. But the doors are thrust slightly apart, a small amount of light escaping through them. He throws up dust as he gets close, the motes spiralling in and out of this almost imperceptible glow.

Someone has been through here.

He thinks he might prefer the apathy, because this makes his stomach drop.

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