a soviet defector and a test tube baby walk into a bar

[did_unkindly]

Jack is really looking forward to getting out of here.

Maybe he'll visit his parents. The farm seems like a beautiful dream compared to the broken, bloody awfulness of Medical Pavilion. He's pretty sure he never walked around in fear of drowning any second back in Kansas. Nobody tried to put hooks in his liver at all. It was nice!

He sits behind a reception desk, shaking. He knows he's got to push forward, he's going to keep pushing forward, but... give him a moment, okay? He's just been swarmed by splicers; he's found out that he has to detour around and find some kind of mad doctor just to reach Atlas's submarine. Boy. That's going to be... great. He's going to die, isn't he.

So he's regrouping behind this reception desk -- the receptionist's still here, give or take some of her head -- with the wrench in one hand and a creme cake in the other.

Munch. Munch. Munch.

Breathe, Jack. It's aaaaall gonna be okay.

Probably. Maybe.

Index, Why Not?
Scene One: He Blinded Me With Science ~or~ Stop Giving Yourself Brain Damage, Asshole
Scene Two: Telekinosis ~or~ Been Around Rapture And I, I, I, I Can't Find My Baby
Scene Three: All I Wanna Do Is [Bang Bang Bang Bang] And [Big Daddy Noise] And Take Your ADAM

Comments

[krasotamozga]

And that ever-present drip echoes down the hall. Drip... drip... drop. Into a puddle of blood or water. Impossible to tell, and probably better off unknown.

A splicer yowls upstairs, then scampers off. Whatever her business, she hadn't seen him. Little victories.

But just as the perimeter starts to seem secure, a footstep rings out on the tiles. Then another... and a third. Not a stumbling splicer, but someone with sure footing - and in this place, someone who had to be armed.

[did_unkindly]

Oh no.

Jack swallows the cake, pockets the wrench and gets out his pistol as quietly as possible. But he can't help the few noises of clicking metal that echo off the water and tiles. Even the noises he makes himself are chilling -- because who knows who else can hear them?

He gets up on his knees, peeks over the top of the reception desk. It's intuition by now to have the gun in his hand, already cocked.

Maybe he'll get lucky and whoever it is will just walk on by.

[krasotamozga]

Just his luck. They're coming closer. And closer. Measured, even, and... and from what the hell direction?

Until all of a sudden they stop.

Click.

Another pistol cocks to his right. A man stands deep in the shadow beside the desk, bloodied sleeve and cheekbones catching the white-green tones from the lamps.

[did_unkindly]

Jack hasn't been in Rapture so long. He hasn't gotten to the point of shooting first.

The guy is almost on top of him by the time he starts to wonder if that is a mistake.

He stands up quickly -- he's been spotted, anyway -- and his gun hand is the steadiest part of his body, pointing its barrel straight at the man's heart. (Or -- where Jack thinks a heart probably is, anyway. He's just a farm kid, he's making a wild guess. Only it happens that the guess is now -- and always is -- dead right.)

Jack's attempt to not look terrified is an utter critical failure. But--

"Your face is normal?"

What? It's unusual!

[krasotamozga]

The light shifts - or does the man? - and reveals more of his face. A moustache. A lock over his forehead. A look in his eyes that's all at once hollow and creepy and fried.

But at the sight of Jack's reaction he frowns. Half curious... half confused.

"You are not a splicer?"

[did_unkindly]

...Uh well about that.

"I'm not... crazy."

Damn his inability to lie properly. The fact that this guy looks creepy as hell and still has a gun on him is not helping a whole lot.

"I just want to get back out."

The 'please don't shoot me' is implied.

[krasotamozga]

The stranger appraises him with a suspicious eyebrow and a turn of his head. The cogs in his head grind as he deliberates for one minute.

Two.

And at last he lowers the gun.

"The state of your mind I will see," he answers, in an accent thick with Moscow. "But you wait before you shoot."

[did_unkindly]

It's okay, Jack has experience with thick accents.

"Well, you weren't shooting at me," Jack says by way of uneasy explanation. Later, that will no longer suffice. But it'll take a lot more splicer attacks, a lot more blood without consequence, to get him to that point.

Jack also lowers his -- uh. Well, he clicks the safety on, dips the gun a bit. And his finger's on the barrel, not the trigger, in a display of firearm safety Booker Dewitt could learn from. That's the same sentiment, right?

"And... the splicers always do."

[krasotamozga]

The man looks askance.

"You too," he notes, and replaces his own safety. A crash shakes some dust a few floors above, and his gaze darts up before drifting back down.

"All right, stranger." He sidesteps a puddle, oxfords spattered with mud. "Keep talking."

[did_unkindly]

Jack looks up at the noise as well, gun hand -- and empty left hand -- twitching. He's gotten very jumpy very quickly since the crash. Which, to be fair, passes for a survival technique down here.

Back to the man.

"...Talking about what?"

He gets the impression he's done something wrong, at least in the man's eyes. But he can't for the life of him work out what.

[krasotamozga]

"Who you are." The man paces. "What you are. Why you came. How." He purses his lips and folds his arms behind his back. "For weeks I believed I was the last sane man in this place. And you understand, to find you..." he eyes his audience - "... it makes me... suspicious."

[did_unkindly]

Oh, wow, the whole story then. Tall order, good thing Jack is genetically engineered to b-- I mean, naturally quite compliant.

He swallows and then explains, in his slow voice.

"I'm not from here. I don't want to be here. I was on a plane and it crashed." The state of his clothes -- drenched, more than just dripped on -- supports his story. The actual event is fuzzy, but that's probably normal with trauma and stuff. "I'm Jack. Jack Wynand."

He wants to be glad that he's found another non-splicer. But... well, that Andrew Ryan man's not a splicer either, he thinks, and that guy's not exactly happy to see him. This man may not be raving, but Jack feels like he should stay wary all the same.

[krasotamozga]

The man himself seems to deliberate again, but this time it's for a different reason. The stranger's story could hold up. Or it couldn't. The waterlogged wretch could be lying through his teeth, and he could wake up dead in the morning.

Or he could just be lost. Lost and as pitiful as he looks.

"So it's your plane that crashed in the belly of this place." He runs a hand through his hair. "You want to wake up half the city, you did a hell of a job."

[did_unkindly]

He nods.

"And there were... other people on it."

Jack doesn't sound sad exactly -- uncomfortable, sure, but it's more like he's still trying to grasp what happened. It was a very large death toll, very suddenly, without a whole lot of time to stop and think about it since. So it just kind of hangs there in his memory, almost unreal.

[krasotamozga]

"Well," he starts. "Maybe you pardon my being callous. But--"

All of a sudden there's the sound of someone running. A nurse with two bloodied hands comes charging from around the corner. He whirls around, steels himself, and aims...

[did_unkindly]

...and a stream of electricity pins the nurse in place, crackling around her. Like I said. Being jumpy is a survival strategy.

Okay so maybe after the whole 'are you a splicer' talk Jack didn't exactly think this one through all the way, but you know. Zap first, answer questions later. He aims his gun as well, heedless for a moment of the stranger beside him.

[krasotamozga]

The man's first shot catches her right through the chest. Bang! And a second rips through her head.

Or was that the stranger's? He only fired once.

When the body hits the ground he glances behind himself, surprise and horror on the same face. He knows damn well what the young man's been up to to have been able to do that, but he can... walk, talk, shoot all right...

... must not have been using for long.

"You, too," he repeats. But there's no anger behind it. Call it the neutrality of the scientific method.

[did_unkindly]

Oh jesus, he didn't want to make the guy look horrified.

Don't look at him like that. He's spliced but he's not a Splicer.

The crackles of electricity that are lighting his veins up blue short and vanish, and he gets a defensive kind of look. Nods.

[krasotamozga]

In the ensuing pause the look fades off the man's face. Looks like he's too tired to argue.

"I should warn you, maybe..." he adds, striding across the hall - "... that you're doing a serious damage." He nudges at the dead splicer with his toe. "The frontal lobe. Amygdala. After that to the hippocampus and finally the motor cortex." He turns her over. Nothing good on her. "It's why they have the... uh."

English fails him for a moment, and he shakes his hand to demonstrate. "... Twitching."

[did_unkindly]

Well, Atlas did say that plasmids were what messed up all these people, but he also didn't sound too worried about Jack taking that one, so... Atlas'd tell him if there was a problem, he thinks. I mean Jack is helping him rescue his family, they're tight.

Also those sure were some words. Jack may possibly definitely be looking confused. Explain like he's three, please.

"I don't feel different." That one's less defensive, more just stating facts.

[krasotamozga]

"You wouldn't," Kostya advises him. "At first."

"I can explain more," he continues, "but this is not a good place." He returns his gun to his waistband and dusts off his hands. "I can take you somewhere safe, but believe me..." he comes closer, passing in and out of the light - "... I will watch you."

From the look of those eyes, that's something he'll make good on.

[did_unkindly]

...Well, if his brain is going to short-circuit on itself at any minute, that does seem like something he should know about. Good work, Kostya. You've put a seed of doubt and worry into Jack's face.

He opens his mouth to answer.

[spliced_irish]

Okay, this has gone on long enough. Fontaine has a plan in mind, and it doesn't involve the kid getting waylaid by some well-meaning chump advising him to Just Say No. What's worse, it looks like Jack might even be thinking about going with him.

Nope. If you're undermining Atlas's authority, you get shut down. If you're waylaying the kid on his way to win Fontaine a city, you get shut down. If you're a real screwy character and try to do both at the same time...

The radio crackles, interrupting Jack before he can get a word out.

"We're wasting precious time here, boyo," he says, all Irish and reasonable but understandably impatient, Jack, you get him? "Wouldya kindly disregard this trash and get a move on?"

[did_unkindly]

Jack closes his mouth and the doubt vanishes.

God, it's a relief to hear from Atlas. Of course he would've said something if there was a danger that Jack might... you know. This guy's obviously making a mistake.

"Sorry," he tells Kostya, as he adjusts the radio's strap on his shoulder. Bounces the pistol in his other hand. Moves a foot, ready to leave.

"I've gotta go."

[krasotamozga]

Kostya turns on his own heel and melts back into the shadows. There's a volume he could say about what he's just observed, but for now... well...

... Now's not the time.

"Well... if you wish to follow Atlas..." he leaves as a parting shot - "... as you wish."