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

[did_unkindly]

He's not wrong about the splicers. A couple of voices reach him from the distance -- a way away, probably, but something for Sinclair to keep aware of. Sounds like a man and a woman jeering at some third party.

Apparently things escalate quickly, because the sound of taunts turns straight away into the sound of flying bullets. And then there are no more taunts. Perhaps there are two fewer splicers for Sinclair to worry about after all.

...Although he may want to worry about the single pair of footsteps that remain.

Between the thin layer of seawater flowing across the floor, and the echoing stone of Rapture's corridors, the footsteps are clearly audible. And they're jogging in Sinclair's direction.

[modestman]

Sinclair perks up at the sound of distant voices, his cue to pick up and move. But there's no way he's going to get very far very fast with his leg bleeding like it is. His best bet is to find a hiding spot and hope his gun will fire wet.

There's a desk a few paces away, and he makes a break for it, squeezing himself underneath and holding his breath.

[did_unkindly]

The footsteps get closer.

And closer.




Clooooossseeeerrrrrrr




And then Jack appears, navigating his way back by going against the current. His clothes are still filthy with blood and saturated with water, but he's moving as if completely uninjured. There's a gun in his hand.

As he enters Sinclair's room he looks wildly around, and spots the closed bulkhead from which all wet things flow into the city.

Running towards it... does not produce a portly gent from Georgia.

Jack stops, dismayed. He's not about to open the door, since it's pretty obvious that the crash site must be beyond it. But he... kind of never thought about what he'd do if Sinclair wasn't somewhere very obvious in the crash's general vicinity.

Spinning in a circle to look around the room also fails to make Sinclair appear.

Well, shit, Jack's fresh out of ideas.

[modestman]

It's a very quiet splicer. Usually they'll wander a bit and entertain themselves with a riveting conversation about the current state of things, sometimes they'll whistle a merry tune, and it all typically sounds frighteningly deranged. But this particular splicer hasn't made a sound besides the quiet splashes of their footsteps.

Slowly, silently, Sinclair sets the hammer and waits.

[did_unkindly]

Very cautiously, Jack walks up to the bulkhead door. There's a little bit of warping and spurting, like any good Rapture door hit by the full fury of the sea, but otherwise it holds firm and true. And for all Jack knows, it was closed and sealed when they first crashed.

If Sinclair's behind that thing, he isn't getting rescued.

Like the sea before it, the full failure of the situation crashes in on Jack. He decided to get them both out. He was making it work. They made a plan of what to do when they reached the surface. And now... are they on the surface?

No. They're still in this fucking fish tank. Sinclair's probably dead. It's a complete failure. A complete failure to escape. A complete failure to affect his own future.

Jack takes out his pipe wrench, goes to a wall perpendicular to the bulkhead door, and begins to smash the shit out of it.

[modestman]

Now that's a little less quiet. Sinclair jumps as the first clang of the wrench hits the wall accompanied by a fair amount of angry grunting and cursing. And it would be a little more along the lines of run-of-the-mill splicer behavior if it didn't sound so much like...

wait.

Sinclair pulls himself out from under the desk, hoping the violent noises will cover up the sound of moving water, and looks around the corner.

And he'll be damned if that isn't Jack. (spoilers: he might be damned anyway.)

"...Kid?" he says, standing up. "Hey, kid." A little louder in case he didn't hear.

[did_unkindly]

He hears, and he spins around, squaring for a fight before the identity of the voice filters through.

Then rage melts into surprise, as if he's the one who should be experiencing surprise right now. You know, that his compatriot isn't dead as a drowned doornail. Sinclair still being with us is totally the strangest thing about this situation.

"Mister Sinclair," he says, with the sharp relief of someone whose fuck-up might not be as big as he thought it was.

[modestman]

...Not quite sure strange begins to cover it.

There's no way Jack made it out of the wreckage, Sinclair escaped with mere seconds to spare and Jack was nowhere in sight when he shut that door.

He looks him up and down for a moment as if trying to convince himself that what he's seeing is real and he didn't just swallow too much sea water or something.

There's a sickening amalgam relief and confusion twisting up his insides but after another moment he speaks. "You were dead, son," he says, "I saw you."

[did_unkindly]

"I come back alive," says Jack.

That's really the simplest way he could put it, though Sinclair is an inquisitive sorta fellow and may well want to inquire further into the mystery.

He starts wading steadily forwards, quite ready to collect his not-radio buddy and find some higher ground.

[modestman]

Sinclair shakes his head, frowning. "Come again?"

[did_unkindly]

"In the Vita Chambers."

It's okay, it was a big deal for Jack the first time too.

"We should go higher."

[modestman]

"The Vita--" Sinclair starts, but that's a whole mess of questions they probably don't have time to get into right now. He holsters his gun and follows Jack, allowing the relief to take over. He smiles. The kid's a damn wonder, and at this point Sinclair expects it's not the last time he'll surprise him.

[did_unkindly]

Jack isn't easily given to awe and wonderment -- he was always supposed to just accept things and move on, not dwell on them too much -- and his mind is on the job of finding a staircase. But he keeps remembering the thought that Sinclair was dead, and half-glancing at Sinclair alive and walking behind him, and getting these sudden feelings of relief. It's almost bizarre. There have been plenty of people down here who've made him feel all kinds of things, but relief has not been a frequent offender.

At a broad staircase, he begins to jog up, but then he pauses and looks back to make sure Sinclair is limping up it without issue. He's not letting the guy get away again that easily.

[modestman]

Sinclair's slowly shuffling his way behind Jack, not at any sort of speed to worry about. He's trying to keep up and succeeding reasonably well, though jogging is probably out of the question.

At the top, he leans back against the wall and holds his hand over the wound on his leg. When he pulls it away, there's blood on it. Well, you know, it's pretty impossible to heal a cut in a bunch of water. He'll need more bandages, whenever they come across them, but he doesn't suspect he's in danger of bleeding out.

While he's leaning, he takes the opportunity to voice one of his many questions. "You're telling me...you can't die?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack gets in a worried look or two at Sinclair's bleeding leg, in between shifting from foot to foot and looking out for splicers. For all that he's been mauled and murdered every way from tuesday, he's not wholly familiar with the natural way a cut like that should heal. Should it still be bleeding? At least Sinclair doesn't seem worried, so probably he can trust the guy's judgement.

"Only down here," he says, and just catches himself before adding I think.

After a few moments, he adds reluctantly: "It's... because of Ryan."

[modestman]

He shakes his head. He's seen the Vita Chambers around and knew of course what they were intended to do but he'd never seen anyone use them. Of course Ryan would be able to, but...

"If Ryan rigged this place so he couldn't die, you want to explain why he's stone cold dead right now?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack looks a little startled at the question. It's too... perceptive. It cuts too close to the truth of things.

He doesn't want to flat-out refuse to answer, though. Sinclair nearly dying has shaken him a bit. So he stumbles over words for a moment, and then says--

"The -- the only one close, it was turned off."

Not the whole truth, but you know.

[modestman]

Sinclair's still shaking his head when he looks at Jack. He's still hiding something, and it's still relevant, whatever it is.

"You shut it off?" Because if he didn't, that sounds like some rotten bad luck. Ryan's own Vita Chamber in his own office mysteriously turned off on the day that he just so happens to be murdered.

[did_unkindly]

It's kind of really really hard to lie when he's asked a direct question like that.

He shakes his head.

[modestman]

And there's guilt all over Jack's face, anyone could see that. Sinclair's expression is some just short of frustration, something a little more on the distressed side when he speaks.

"Kid, I was-- you were dead. You died in that bathysphere. I think that warrants some sort of honest explanation, don't you?"

He's not exactly pleading, but at least this time he's not asking purely out of intrusiveness. After all, the image is still fresh in his mind, and the lingering sourness of guilt. As much as he always hates being in the dark about anything, this time it might make the difference between escape and imprisonment. This time, he might actually need to know.

[did_unkindly]

"He told me to kill him," Jack blurts out at last, almost cutting Sinclair's question off.

There are a hundred and one good reasons. He can't get the image out of his head. He doesn't want to make his only remaining ally leave by keeping too many secrets. He's just bad at saying no.

The statement hangs heavy on the air, and he doesn't know what to say next.

This is not how he imagined the tearful loving papa-kid reunion would go, Sinclair, you jerk.

[modestman]

Well that...

lines up pretty well with the facts.

If Ryan wanted to die, he would shut off his own Vita Chamber, but--

"...Why?"

[did_unkindly]

"I don't know. I don't know!"

Theories, theories, theories, but there has been a lot to come to grips with since the encounter in Ryan's office, from Ryan himself to Fontaine and the entire story of Jack's own purpose and history. Crashing in a mysterious city and shooting up superpowers doesn't have shit on what he's had to wrap his head around since breaking through that door. And how can he even know what the hell Ryan was thinking? He doesn't know the guy except from a few audio messages, and being yelled at over the radio. He knows a loving figment of his imagination better than he knows his flesh and blood father.

He glares at the floor, his face and the place behind his eyes prickling hot.

[modestman]

Sinclair sighs, watching Jack stare down the cracking tiles. It's understandable that he wouldn't know Ryan's motives, Sinclair figures he might actually have a better handle on that part than Jack. But for the short time Jack has been here, Sinclair also doubts that he himself would have motive enough to commit this murder for the reasons anyone else would. As brave as Jack is, it's hard to believe he fell from the sky purely to be Rapture's savior, defeating the tyrant to free the city. There's something else here.

He makes sure to soften his tone a great deal before he says anything else.

"So why'd you do it, son?" Simple enough, non-accusing. Just asking, if your motive wasn't Ryan's then...what was it?

[did_unkindly]

Wow, is that ever a question he never intends to answer honestly.

He could do it, if he could give any of the reasons Fontaine fed him. He could do it, if he could even say that yeah, I heard enough, I wanted to kill him.

He could answer, if he knew for sure that, when everything came together and he realised what was happening, he still would've done what he did without the influence of that phrase.

"Doesn't matter," Jack tells the floor roughly. "He's dead."