darling it's better down where it's wetter

[did_unkindly]

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

Comments

[modestman]

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.

[did_unkindly]

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

[modestman]

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.

[did_unkindly]

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.

[modestman]

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.

[did_unkindly]

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!

[modestman]

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.

[did_unkindly]

Okay, that. That he has to grant.

"I didn't ask for it," he grumbles. This, at least, is nothing but the truth.

[modestman]

Sinclair doesn't doubt that that's true, but even if it wasn't Jack who wanted to be here, it was someone else who wanted him. Andrew Ryan raved day and night about spies, everyone who he thought deserved to be a part of Rapture was already here. It couldn't have been him. But it was someone. And the more Sinclair thinks about it, the more he feels like this is information he should be concerned about. For multiple reasons.

He straightens up a little in his seat to look directly at Jack. "Are you really gonna tell me you think this was an accident, kid? Because I think you're a little smarter than that." Maybe not on an intellectual level, but he knows Jack has a strong sense of instinct. There's no way something that enormous could just slip past him.

[did_unkindly]

Lying is going to get him nowhere, he can tell. But telling the truth? About where he comes from? The fact that he was made? And then used?

That's not something that appeals. Sorry not sorry, Mister Sinclair.

He starts shaking his head unconsciously, and on his face is... unhappiness. Not sadness, not discomfort, not the blues, but something more injured and angry. No, his being here isn't an accident; it was Fontaine. Every moment of his existence is because of Fontaine. That's something he's still coming to grips with, it's enormous, it's like a weight bearing down on him and every time he thinks he has a hold on it, he realises it's bigger than he thought.

And he got revenge. He's glad he did, he's glad he killed Fontaine. But that didn't make it better. And so his hackles are starting to rise.

"I'm not going to tell you why I'm here."

[modestman]

Well Mr. Ryan Junior, that's not an answer that's going to satisfy Sinclair.

"If any of this is gonna work," he says with a vague gesture, "you're going to have to come clean at some point. If there's anything I need to know about you or your circumstances, son, you've got to tell me. I need to be able to trust you."

Okay, so it's something of an empty emotional appeal. He doesn't need to trust Jack with anything just yet, but to fair he may very well need to some time in the near future. You never know.

[did_unkindly]

"There's nothing you need to know."

Wow. He shouldn't have gotten thinking about Fontaine again. Now he really wants to punch someone in the face with exploding buck.

[modestman]

Okay, that's fine. He can shift his angle if he needs to, he has no problem with that.

"If you want to get out of here, you're gonna have to tell me." Business partners don't keep secrets from each other, after all.

[did_unkindly]

Jack opens his mouth, then stops. He's not exactly sure why to begin with. Then it dawns on him: Sinclair's argument is off, from what he's understood of the conversation.

"I thought I was helping you get out," he says. "All you have is money."

[modestman]

"You're misunderstanding me, chief," Sinclair shakes his head. "We're helping each other. Neither one of us is likely to get out alone, but we're damn sure not to get out of here if we're not on the same page."

[did_unkindly]

"It doesn't matter why I'm here."

Jack would rather not kill Sinclair -- even without the proposition, this is the most anyone's talked to him in what seems like forever -- so he's trying to keep his cool, but it's easier said than done.

By which I mean he's keeping his cool about as well as a broken refrigerator on a hot day.

[modestman]

"I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. If there's somebody who might swoop in at any minute because they're keeping an eye on you and they don't want you leaving, that's gonna end up mattering. I need to know what I'm dealing with here. It's a little difficult to work out a proper strategy if I can't even see all the pieces."

And that much is actually true.

[did_unkindly]

"They won't be swooping in. They're dead."

And Jack still has a lot of unresolved anger about it as well as everything in the world ever, but that doesn't keep him from speaking with an abrupt and savage satisfaction.

[modestman]

So there're two bodies.

Well, there's more than that, but--

that is curious.

Jack looks a little too pleased about that and it unsettles Sinclair to some degree, but he ignores it. This is a matter to return to later, he knows he won't get anything out of Jack right now.

"Alright, sport, if you're sure." He looks at Jack again for one more confirmation that this mysterious third (fourth?) party is definitely not going to be an issue for either of them.

[did_unkindly]

"I am," he says loudly, and eats some more ham as if he has a personal vendetta against it.

He's actually shaking a little with unexpected adrenaline. Fontaine. Fontaine Fontaine Fontaine. If anything, he'd like to go back and kill the man again. The fake memories of a family, the fake friendship down here, building words of control right into his brain -- yeah, let's just say there are not enough days in the week for all the therapy Jack is going to need.

But he is still trying not to flip out too hard, because he's fairly sure Sinclair wouldn't zap back in the nearest Vita Chamber.

[modestman]

Sinclair watches Jack's attention return fully to his canned ham and thinks maybe he's beginning to figure out what it is that disquiets him. In and of itself, it's not exactly a suspicious thing, but it's another unanswered question and the more of those he can eliminate, the better.

"Where did you say you were from?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack glares at Sinclair, swallows his ham, opens his mouth and prepares to give a home state that hasn't been fed into his head by a scientist. And then -- it's not happening. There is no such thing.

This, of course, just makes him angrier.

"Kansas."

If there was a plasmid for making looks kill...

[modestman]

"Not a fan?" Sinclair asks, outwardly amused despite being fully aware that there's more to Jack's anger than just frustration at being questioned. "I'm a Georgia man myself, some beautiful countryside out there. But I'm sure you're familiar with that. I hear Kansas is grand in the fall."

[did_unkindly]

Well, at least false memories come in useful sometimes, because he can call up an image of Kansas as clear as if he had seen it himself. Hell, he might have done, it's not like he can tell which memories came from real life and which ones came out of a bottle.

For a minute, he's not sure what to say, as snapshots of childhood mingle with the knowledge that they never happened, not really.

His face feels hot. He swallows and mumbles:

"Corn mazes. And the state fair every fall."

[modestman]

"Well that sounds like a lovely tradition," he says. "'D you have a favorite attraction? I used to love the ferris wheel when I was just a tadpole."

Small talk, that's all this is. Dead bodies and escape plans make for such weighty conversation. Lighten the mood is all Sinclair's trying to do. He would pursue this topic even if it didn't look like it made Jack horribly uncomfortable.