Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Lion and the Lamb

Prologue

Jack Wynand of Kansas took a long draw on his cigarette and sighed heavily, the smoke from his mouth emitted as a dense cloud. The trip to see his cousins in England had been sudden and he was still getting used to the fact that he was leaving the US for the first time, along with his state and even the farm. The ride to the airport had been interesting, what with all the sights to see. He had never seen so many people together in one place before. Trips to the nearest town from his family's farm had been rare, and it wasn't that big of a town anyway.

Taking his cigarette out of his mouth and flicking it to get rid of excess ash, Jack took out his wallet and flipped it open. A picture of himself and his parents looked back at him, their smiling faces bringing back warm memories. He smiled back as he gently rubbed the picture with his thumb before closing his wallet and putting it away. It was time for his present.

His parents had given him the package just before he had boarded his plane, telling him to read the attached note.

It read: To Jack with love, from Mom & Dad. Would you kindly not open until 630 2' N 290 55' W. An odd note to be sure. Jack had requested an atlas at the beginning of the flight. He had been able to calculate how long it would take the plane to reach the coordinates, and it was about that time.

Opening the box, he found himself squinting to see what was inside. Flicking on the overhead light, he froze as he saw what was within the present: A revolver and another note.

The gun filling him with an icy fear, Jack took up the note and read it.

Would you kindly hijack the plane and crash it into the ocean.

What? Why would….

Something clicked in his head, and the why didn't matter anymore. His body seemed to act before his mind had completed sending out orders. Tossing the box into the aisle and raising the pistol, Jack stood up and leveled the weapon at the stewardess. The pistol felt like a natural extension of his arm, like he was familiar with using it, even though the only guns he had ever touched had been his father's rifles and shotgun. Just behind her was the cockpit, where the pilot and copilot were. All he had to do was get by her, kill them, and fly the place into the ocean. Just as he was ordered.

As the stewardess cowered against the wall and begged him not to kill her, Jack became aware of something behind him. Suspecting that one of the other passengers was trying to get the drop on him, Jack turned around to confront them.

There, standing right behind him, was a young woman, but she was no passenger. Her clothes were dirty and torn, spattered with blood and grease and torn in several places. Her face, beautiful as it was, was bloodstained as well, and her blue eyes…the only word to describe them was haunted.

She looked him dead in the eye, and then spoke.

"Save us, Jack."

L&L~L&L~L&L

Jack awoke with a start, his heart hammering in his chest.

Confusion set in for a moment as he looked at his surroundings, then he remembered where he was and why. He sighed loudly, jumping when it came out like a whale's call. That's right, the modification, or mauling, of his vocal cords. Yet something else to get used to.

It was only a few days ago, yet it felt like a lifetime. Three days ago, he had been an American farm boy on his way to see his English cousins. Now, he was the pseudo-king of a ruined underwater metropolis who had begun life as a science experiment/weapon and had killed his way to the top. A few hours earlier, he had arrived back at Tenenbaum's from killing Fontaine/Atlas and after dinner, had fallen into a very deep sleep. From that first splicer all the way up to Frank Fontaine himself, he had become the undisputed apex predator of Rapture.

Between the Rapture Welcome Center and Point Prometheus, there was a trail of bodies that marked his path. Only a few had names: Dr. Steinman at the Medical Pavilion, Peach Wilkins at Port Neptune, Martin Finnegan, Silas Cobb, and Hector Rodriguez at Fort Folic, Andrew Ryan in his office at Hephaestus, Sander Cohen in his Mercury Suites Apartment, and Frank Fontaine at the highest point of Point Prometheus. That didn't take into account all the Thuggish splicers, Leadheads, Nitros, Houdinis, Spider splicers, and Big Daddies he had killed. In the genetic jungle that Rapture had become, he was King. A lion among hyenas.

Maybe part of the reason he was top dog in Rapture was the fact that he wasn't really human. After conception, he had been taken from his mother's womb and artificially grown by Tenenbaum and Suchong. Accelerated growth and memory implantation had replaced a normal childhood, along with who know what else. He was scarily proficient with firearms, could hack Rapture machinery like no one's business, and his affinity for plasmids and gene tonics was amazing. He had spliced whenever he could and so far, he wasn't showing any symptoms of ADAM sickness. And if the behavior of Rapture's inhabitants, before and after splicing, was typical of human beings, then he was definitely something else.

The only people who had escaped his wrath had been the Little Sisters. Taking pity on them, he had cured them of their condition, freeing them and turning them back into little girls. Getting only half the available ADAM from them had been a good price for keeping his soul (if he even had one).

Rubbing his eyes, Jack sat up and straightened his back, a round of soft pops ringing out. Stifling a loud grunt, he turned and set his feet on the floor and looked around.

Tenenbaum was asleep in her room, a little girl cuddled to her chest. Jack had no idea how to feel about her. She was responsible for the discovery of ADAM and thus the destruction of Rapture, for the existence of the Little Sisters, and for his upbringing and condition. She had also known about the trigger phrase, and while it wasn't clear if she knew that Atlas was really Fontaine, she still didn't do anything to stop that. Also, his vocal cords were now mutilated to the point where he sounded like a dying whale.

On the other hand, she had been rescuing Little Sisters before he had arrived in Rapture and she had been the one to give him the Little Sister Cure plasmid. Without that plasmid, harvesting the Little Sisters would have been his only option. The ADAM and other supplies she had provided more than made up for the ADAM shortage from saving them, plus her voice over the radio had reminded him that he wasn't alone in Rapture, both before and after Atlas' betrayal.

She had a lot to make up for, but at least she was on the right track.

Most of the other little girls were fast asleep on the multiple beds set up around the safehouse. They all had a tendency to sleep two to a bed. Considering all they had been through, it was more than understandable. Behind the main support pillar, he could hear a couple of voices conversing in whispers along with some flickering lights.

Jack got up and walked over to the support pillar. He was wide awake and not going back to sleep any time soon, plus the girls had taken a shine to him. He was probably the only adult besides Tenenbaum that they trusted not to implant an ADAM slug in their abdomen or to rip it out. They were definitely adorable little things, their lapses back into their Little Sister programming more sad than anything else.

Peering around the corner, Jack spotted the girls. There were three of them, grouped around something on the little table. Surprisingly, they were ignoring the toys spread around them on the floor in favor of whatever it was on the table. Peering closer, Jack saw tears forming in the eyes of the little blond girl. If there was one thing that tugged at his heartstrings, it was a little girl crying.

Glancing around the room at the sleeping girls, Jack made the quietest grunting noise he could. Talking was practically impossible now, not that he did much of that in the first place, but still.

When the girls all looked up at him, he recognized them. The blond girl was the final one he had saved in Hephaestus, one of the brown-haired girls had been saved in the Fighting McDonagh's, and the other had been in Fort Frolic. Odd that the Little Sisters all looked somewhat alike before they had been cured, their natural features revealing themselves afterwards.

"Mr. Bubbles!" the blond one whispered-shouted. Jack cringed and held one finger to his lips. Tenenbaum wouldn't be happy if they woke everyone up.

"Sorry," the blond whispered. Jack smiled and nodded before craning his head like he was trying to get a look at whatever it was they were poring over.

They all made room for him to kneel down. It was an old poster, likely something from Rapture's heyday.

"We were looking at the pretty lady," the first brunette explained as he picked it up for a better look. The first face he recognized was that of Sander Cohen's. He suppressed a shudder before moving on to the rest of the poster, only to freeze in shock. There, on the poster, was the young woman from his dream. The dream itself was obviously a memory, but that last part with her, that had to be a dream, part of his subconscious going weird on him, right?

The girl was even more beautiful without the bloodstains on her face and clothes. Presenting…Elizabeth, the poster read. Cohen's New Songbird! "You Belong to Me" Available in Stores Now!

His hands shaking, Jack set down the poster and took a deep breath. This had to be some more weird brain stuff going on, right? Who knew who he knew in Rapture before Suchong and Tenenbaum screwed up his real memories with his fake ones.

"Mr. Bubbles, what's wrong?" the other brunette asked him, concern in her blue eyes.

Giving his head a good shake, Jack picked up a piece of blank paper and a crayon from the table. He wrote "Who?" on it and then pointed at the young woman.

"That's the pretty lady," the blond girl explained. "She saved me from the bad man a long, long time ago."

Jack raised an eyebrow. Someone else had faced off against Atlas to save a Little Sister? What if she was still alive? "Alive?" he wrote down and then waited patiently for the girl to sound it out.

Tears reappeared in her eyes again. "No," she choked out. "She gave the bad man what he wanted, and he…he," her jaw shook so badly that she couldn't talk. Jack hurriedly leaned down and hugged the little girl before she could begin bawling. She instead cried softly in his shoulder, soaking his sweater.

"She helped us too," the first brunette piped up. When Jack looked up at them, the other brunette continued.

"She helped us to turn scary monster into Mr. Bubbles." Jack raised an eyebrow at that. "Not you Mr. Bubbles, other Mr. Bubbles."

Jack patted the blond girl on the back as he considered what he had been told. This girl, "Elizabeth", had helped Little Sisters before being killed at the hands of Fontaine himself. Who was she, and why had she given her life to save a Little Sister? From what he knew of Rapture before its current state, the Little Sisters were seen as a commodity or resource, not as people. Had she been the blond girl's mother, her aunt, her older sister?

And why had she appeared in his dream? Was she a friend of Tenenbaum's, someone who also saw the Little Sisters as something to save instead of use? Maybe she was someone he knew in Rapture before leaving? Who and what was she? Did it really matter when she was dead now?

"Save us, Jack." He remembered her voice from his dream. Save us. Not just them, me too. Well, he had nothing better to do at the moment. Down here, he had nothing but time.

The blond girl was done crying now, pulling away and rubbing her eyes. Jack patted her on the back and waited for her eyes to clear before writing more.

"Where?" he wrote before pointing at Elizabeth.

The blond sniffed loudly. "Po-Poppa Suchong's Free Cl-clinic," she managed.

Jack raised an eyebrow. He hadn't seen any corpses there that looked remotely like her. Then again, it had been a "long, long time ago".

"She's in a secret place," the blond girl answered his unasked question. "Only I know where."

" Save us, Jack."

He was silent and still for a long moment, and then he wrote once more on the paper.

" Show me please."

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: The Songbird

Jack took a breath as he exited the bulkhead from Olympus Heights to Apollo Square, and promptly gagged, just as he had the first time he visited. The stench of burning garbage, human refuge, rotting corpses, and stagnant sea water mixed together to create a smell that could curdle vinegar.

Jack found himself missing the helmet for his Big Daddy suit. He had abandoned the horrendous thing in the elevator to the highest floor of Point Prometheus. It had been horribly hot and the viewport had limited his vision in the proving grounds, but at least it would have provided some protection from the stench.

Shaking his head to clear it, he hefted his shotgun and moved forward. He had endured Apollo Squares' stink before, along with the more lethal facets of the place. At least this time he wouldn't have to worry about his plasmids changing on him every few minutes. The random plasmid thing that had started up with the first dose of Lot 192 had actually been interesting, forcing him to think up ways to use the one plasmid available to him at the given moment, breaking him of that habit of exclusively using just one or two powers. Still, plasmid versatility was one of the best things in his arsenal.

Jack passed by the corpses of the splicers and Big Daddy from his first trip. He didn't encounter any splicers until he came to the actual Square. Once one of Rapture's transportation hubs, the area's proximity to the slums of Artemis Suites had turned the industrious tram stop into a dump. Just like last time, a couple of Nitro splicers were examining the bodies that hung from the gallows in the middle of the square. The "Gene Traitors", evidently the victims of a splicer-witch hunt, dangled on their ropes while the Nitros tried to dislodge them in order to pilfer whatever their pockets had to offer.

Jack opted to hypnotize a passing Rosie Big Daddy, bringing the hulking workman to his side. A few connecting shots with the pistol at the Nitros was all it took to send the Big Daddy at them. Watching it alternate between shooting them with rivets and bashing them with its gun, Jack made a note to thank Tenenbaum for giving him the plasmid. It was a great help, with the exception of that one time when his Static Discharge tonic went off right when he was standing too close to the hypnotized Daddy.

He hadn't been prepared for the plasmid to instantly wear off and for the Rosie to attack him. It had just taken a few rivets to the back and one to his head to send him to the nearest Vita-Chamber. He made sure to never have Hypnotize Big Daddy and Static Discharge active at the same time after that.

Once the splicers were taken care of, Jack and his new companion headed to Artemis Suites, the actual living space for Rapture's working class. The stench was the worst there and at Hestia Chambers. A "Baby Jane" splicer was making fun of the corpse with the camera, likely a partner of the paparazzi man who had enabled him to gain access to Fontaine's penthouse. A flick of the wrist with a polyps of Security Bullseye brought a swarm of Security Bots to take her out, courtesy of the Security Camera in the middle of the Suites.

The Big Daddy's protective instincts for him came to an end moments after the Baby Jane went down, rumbling and turning to walk away. Thinking of the money and inventing items that he could get off the body, Jack flicked his wrist again, siccing the security system on his former ally.

While the camera's alarms blared anew and the Rosie roared at the attacking bots, Jack leaned back against a support pillar and watched the fight. It wasn't that he enjoyed watching the Big Daddies die, quite the opposite. They were easily the most benign of Rapture's inhabitants, only killing to defend themselves and the Little Sisters. In fact, they were the most like himself, altered and conditioned to be tools instead of men. Killing them for inventing parts, money, and research photos was necessary for his survival, plus it was basically mercy killing. They had to be beyond miserable in their current states, and there wasn't a Big Daddy cure plasmid.

A few Security Bullseye polyps later (one of the best strategies for taking them down) the Rosie came crashing down with a defiant growl and high-pitched wheeze. Ducking to avoid the spinning rotor of one of the bots, Jack moved forward to pilfer the spoils of a hollow victory. Pocketing the money and slipping the parts into his bag, Jack then knelt by the Rosie and patted its head.

Tenenbaum hated the Big Daddies, calling them "brutes" and "golems". He would too, if it wasn't for the Little Sister who would usually be crying over this scene. Their presence had never failed to make guilt surge through his heart, like he had murdered their father or something. Mindless slaves they were, they still protected the girls, and that separated them from the splicers.

Sending up a quick prayer for the soul of the unfortunate creature to anyone who was listening, Jack stood and turned up the stairs to the second floor.

After he had crept up the stairs, he took up position by the Little Sister vent across from Suchong's Free Clinic and scanned for splicers. After a few minutes of hard looking and listening, satisfied that there were no splicers in the immediate area, Jack took out his wrench and gave the vent two hard whacks. A moment later, the blonde girl poked her head out from the vent.

"Hello, Sir Bubbles!" she greeted him, holding out her arms. Jack gently took her underneath the arms and lifted her out of the vent and onto the ground. As she began to cautiously walk to the clinic door, clutching the pieces of a doll to her chest, Jack trailed behind her, hoping that this wouldn't turn into another escort through the proving grounds. Frankly, the fight against Fontaine with his overly-strong powers, security bots, and splicer allies had actually been easier than protecting the little normal girl from wave upon wave of splicers. Honestly, he should have gotten an ADAM reward from her at the end, even if the only thing he would have gotten from that last Gatherer's Garden were Health and EVE Upgrades.

At the door to the Clinic, the girl peered through as it automatically slid to the side. Jack joined her. The hacked camera and turret in the main room and the one outside would have kept splicers out, but it wasn't bad to be too careful. As unlikely as it was for an uncoordinated, idiotic splicer to disable and hack the security measures to be in their favor, especially with the outside one remaining unhacked, it wasn't impossible.

When neither of them saw anything that could be a threat, they entered. A couple of new bodies had added themselves to the mix. Jack picked up the little girl and shielded her eyes until they were past them. Just because she had been draining and drinking blood from corpses for about a year, that didn't mean she needed to see a dead body. She pouted at him when she was set down before moving to the other wall.

"She's behind here!" she announced, pointing to a section just beside the entrance to the hall to Suchong's office. He hadn't really noticed it last, just a section of the wall that had been repaired with boards, some pipes poking through them vertically.

Jack examined the boards, frowning at their strength and the quality of their placement within the wall. Whoever had done this had taken great care to make sure their work was top-notch. Down here, there were only extremes to the quality of products created and services rendered: They were either shoddy, as no one could really go anywhere else for better, or they were incredibly well-made or well-done, following Ryan's ideology of excellence-only to the T.

Seeing that it would take a Big Daddy to rip out the boards and its drill to get through the surrounding repairs, Jack opted to use explosives. Something he had learned early on in Rapture was that proximity mines were best used when they were grouped closely together. The first time he had tried to use them, he had set them up in a line, intending for the Big Daddy he was targeting to run through them. Unfortunately, he had spaced them too close together. When the first one had gone off, the rest had exploded one after the other in a chain reaction, ending with the next to last one exploding right in front of him. He had been blown backwards like a rag doll, only for the very last one to go off as he was flying over it, throwing him straight up. Amazingly, he had still been alive and in agony when he hit the ground, only for the Rosie to rush forward and shoot him repeatedly. That had been a dumb way to die.

Since then, Jack would group several proximity mines together so they would create a far larger blast when they went off. One of his favorite tactics was to put mines on an object, preferably an oil barrel or an oxygen tank, and then telekinetically throw it. Telekinesis was easily one of his favorite plasmids.

Setting up three of his mines on the boards, Jack picked up the little girl and hurriedly put her in the restrooms after thoroughly checking them. Back when the girls had been Little Sisters, he hadn't needed to worry about hurting them while fighting their Big Daddy. Any damage they sustained during the fight was almost instantly healed, something he had been a little jealous about. Now, they were little girls, and susceptible to injury and death, especially in Rapture's ultra-violent environment.

Once the girl was a safe distance away, Jack loaded a frag grenade into his launcher. From what he knew about explosives, and it wasn't much, the frag grenades were misnamed. Instead of throwing out a cloud of shrapnel, they simply exploded. "Concussion Grenades" would have been a better term, but it didn't quite roll off the tongue. Concuss grenades? Nah. Frag grenades it was.

Putting himself diagonally across the room from the mines, Jack aimed down the launcher's sights as best as he could. Whoever had made this thing hadn't made aiming it very comfortable. He was able to approximate where the grenades would land pretty well, so he hadn't really worried much about accuracy with the launcher. This time was pretty different though. Usually when he wanted to set off an explosive at a distance, he simply shot it with one of his guns. He would have done this now, but considering how well the repairs had been put into the wall, another explosive to the mix wouldn't hurt.

Taking a breath and letting out it like he would with the crossbow, Jack squeezed the trigger and let the grenade fly. He ducked behind the dividing wall in the middle of the clinic just before the blast rang out. A smaller explosion followed, adding to the smoke and dust that billowed through the air. The cause was revealed by the remains of the turret landing right next to his cover, sparking and smoking. His ears ringing from the explosion in the small space and his coughs sounding like his larynx were made of corroded metal, Jack peeked out and smiled when he saw that a hole large enough for him to squeeze through was now available. It was smoking around the edges and the pipes were now ragged bits of metal to cut himself on, but it was passable.

"Mr. Bubbles?" He looked over to the restroom door to find the girl peeking out at him. "Can we go to the pretty lady now?"

He nodded and she fully emerged from the restroom, walking over to the new makeshift door. Jack followed her, pausing by the turret. The turrets had been well-made, but when they finally did go down, they were really broken. He was able to scrounge some bullets from the remains before following her.

He made sure that she didn't hurt herself going through the hole in the wall and took care himself, though it didn't stop him from ripping a hole in his suit on one of the jagged pipes. Inside there was a short passage with another hole in the opposite wall, this one much larger and cleaner around the edges. The first had likely been like this one before it had been repaired. Once the blond girl had stepped through, she began running and disappeared into the dark.

Uttering a loud moan that should have been a loud "stop", Jack began to hurry after her, cursing in his head. Why did kids have to do stupid stuff like this, running off in the middle of a dangerous city? Had he been like this when he was a…oh. Never mind.

Squeezing through the second opening (his Big Daddy suit was bulky), Jack began to hurry after her. He stopped short when his eyes, quick to adjust to Rapture's darkened halls, caught sight of something. Right in front of him was a Gatherer's Garden machine.

Despite their wares, the plasmid and tonic vending machines always creeped him out a little. The two girls by their sides were parodies of the real Little Sisters, their oversized heads and contented expressions mocking the fact that the Little Sisters were ADAM slaves. For all his talk about freedom, his father had no qualms about turning others into slaves; the Big Daddies, the Little Sisters, and the splicers themselves.

Shaking away thoughts of his massive hypocrite of a father, Jack turned down the hall and began to hurry after the girl. More Gatherer's Garden machines lined the hall, broken and looted, their wares long gone. This place had apparently been a dump for the machines. As if one of them hadn't been unnerving enough. At least they weren't spewing out their annoying little jingles.

" My daddy's SMARTER than Einstein, STRONGER than Hercules and lights a fire with a SNAP of his fingers. Are you as good as my daddy, Mister? Not if you don't visit the Gatherer's Garden, you aren't! Smart daddies get spliced, at the Gardens!"

He snorted as the advertisement played though his head. Thank God the Big Daddies didn't splice. That would be the stuff of nightmares, and so many more trips to the Vita-Chambers.

He spotted the girl at the end of the ruined hall, kneeling besides a body propped against a large window looking out over Rapture. From outside, the city didn't look so bad, beautiful even. If only it wasn't for the sad pair at the window to dispel the awful truth. He hurried towards the girl and the corpse.

As he approached, his vision grew hazy and gray, a stray memory from his ADAM appearing as ghosts to him and him alone.

Five men stood around in a half-circle, waiting for something. Two of them stood off to the sides, the remaining three facing the hall. One of the three was restraining a struggling little girl, a Little Sister.

"Hey sister, over here," the man in the middle said. Jack started as he realized that he knew that voice. Atlas, Fontaine's Irish alter ego.

A ghostly young woman walked through Jack, making him jump. That was a first. Apparently, the ADAM that gave him this memory was from one of the five men present.

The ghostly Little Sister tried to run forward, the man restraining her going to one knee to better hold her still. She continued to struggle against him.

"Do you have it?" Atlas asked as the young woman came up in front of him.

"I have it," she affirmed, a note of finality in her voice.

"Give it over, then," Atlas ordered. "I'm keen to get this brat off me hands."

The young woman removed a slip of paper from a pocket, handling it like she'd rather not be touching it.

"You know what?" She began, "Andrew Ryan said I was a rube. But he was wrong." She held out the paper to Atlas. He started for it, staring like it was the keys to Heaven. "I'm not the rube, Atlas"she continued, flipping the paper up and out of his reach. "You are."

The other two men closed in, like they were expecting her to run or something. One of them, the one on the left, seemed to be wearing an odd mask. She glanced at them both and there was a scoff in her voice as she looked back to Atlas.

"Now, we both know what happens next." She held the paper out again, allowing Atlas to take it this time. "Just get it over with," she finished. Atlas turned back to his men and held his hand out to the remaining one.

"Well, love…" the man handed Atlas something. A wrench. "If you insist." With a grunt, Atlas brought the wrench up and struck the woman on the head, hard. Jack gasped loudly as he watched the ghost crumble to the ground, dead or not, he couldn't tell.

The Little Sister decided to bite the man holding her back. She ran off into the shadows as he howled, holding his hand. The others began to run after her.

"Don't bother with the brat," Atlas ordered. He was eyeing the paper greedily. "We'll catch up with that little one sooner or later."

Atlas turned to the window, unfolding the paper while smiling the whole time. As his eyes swept over it, they turned from satisfaction and joy to confusion and then panic. On the ground, the girl groaned and tried to get up.

"What is this?" Atlas rushed over to her and shoved the paper in her face. "It's just a buncha gibberish!"

The girl went down again, the blow winning out over consciousness.

Atlas got angry. "What does this say, you little whore?", he roared, his accent slipping at last. "Hey…hey, hey, hey!"

The woman looked up again, her cranial injuries obvious in her movements.

"What does this say?" Fontaine insisted.

It took a moment for the woman to focus on it. When she spoke, she was breathless from pain. "It says…" Her eyes finally seemed to focus. "…'Would you kindly'."

Jack's breath left him, the familiar words bringing a chill up and down his spine as his hair all stood on end. This was where his part in this sad story had truly begun.

Fontaine brought the paper back up and smiled down at it before standing back up and turning towards his men.

"We've got the activation phrase," Atlas' accent slipped back into place better than a genetic key into its slot. "Now all we've got to do is get that genetic freak of nature on an airplane, and Rapture's ours."

He glanced back down at the woman, and with another loud grunt, brought the wrench back down on her head. She collapsed and laid still.

Colors came back into Jack's vision as the ADAM memory ended. He just stood there, processing the information, before walking over to the little girl and the corpse by the window. He kneeled down before and studied the young woman responsible for his return to Rapture.

Despite the decomposition that time had wrought upon her, he could still recognize the young woman from his dream and the poster. Unlike most of the bodies he had come across in Rapture, there were no ADAM growths or tumors on her, not that he could see anyway. The killing wound was apparent by the trail of dried blood down her forehead. She must have had enough strength to pull herself over to the window and sit against it after Atlas left before she died.

This…this was all her fault. The deaths of all those people on the airplane, his fear when he arrived in Rapture, the physical pain of being shot, slashed, and attacked, the emotional pain of Atlas' betrayal and manipulations, and the mental pain of learning his true origins, she was responsible for all of it. If she had just left well enough alone, he would still be topside, blissfully unaware that his home and parents were all a well-constructed lie.

Glaring down at her, Jack got to his feet and turned around. He had seen the woman responsible for the blond girl's escape from Atlas, now he was going to wait at the exit for the girl to get tired and want to go back to Tenenbaum's. Tomorrow, he was going to get to work on escaping from this damned city, leave it and every corpse and splicer in the place to rot on the bottom of the sea.

Just before he was about to enter the hall, he noticed something on the floor to his right, leaning up against the wall. It was an audio diary. Summoning it with telekinesis, he grabbed the thing out of midair. Judging from the thick layer of dust, it had been sitting there for a very long time. The diary had originally belonged to "Lonnie Lobley", an older man with white sideburns and moustache and two of the coldest eyes Jack had ever seen. The diary was titled "Don't Piss Atlas Off". Jack clicked it on with a clacking whirr as he headed to the exit.

Atlas' voice came through: "Two weeks."

A moan followed. "Uhn…what?" It was the woman. Elizabeth, he remembered. Her name was apparently Elizabeth.

"You've been down two weeks, love." Atlas replied as Elizabeth coughed. "Feckin' doctors. Better off hirin' a million monkeys." Jack couldn't help but snort at that. It came out as the strangest sound he had ever heard from a Big Daddy.

Elizabeth finished coughing. "Our deal was to break you out of prison. What, did you expect me to win your war for you too?"

"I'd tend to your own knitting if I were you," Atlas replied. "Now darlin', being that you were Suchong's lab assistant and all, why not tell me where me Ace in the Hole went to?"

Jack stopped short at that. Elizabeth had been Suchong's lab assistant? Ace in the Hole, that had been what Fontaine had called him in Ryan's Office. Had she been involved directly in his creation? And she had apparently let Atlas out of some prison? Man, she really got around down here.

"I don't know what the Ace-" Elizabeth started.

"As I said," Atlas interrupted, "I'm no doctor. But that doesn't mean I don't find the field fascinatin'. I keep up on all the medical journals and the like."

"I hope you have someone to help you with all the big words," Elizabeth retorted. Jack let out a Big Daddy's version of a guffaw. It sounded like a whale gagging on an anchor. Elizabeth may have been Suchong's lab assistant, but she had a sassy streak.

"You know what part a' the brain free will comes from, stubbornness?" Atlas continued. "The pre-frontal lobe. Now, I think it's fair to say, you're a bit of a stubborn one, are ya not? Man named Steinman taught me this. He's a bit of a lunatic, but a fine surgeon."

Jack rolled his eyes. Only in Rapture would it be ok for a lunatic to also be a surgeon. Now that he thought of it, Steinman was likely responsible for Atlas' facial differences from Fontaine's.

"He calls this little trick a 'transorbital lobotomy'." Elizabeth's breathing picked up at that, like she was suddenly scared. What was a lobotomy? "Take a hold of her lads."

"You're wasting your time," Elizabeth protested.

"Now, if you can't remain still, I can't be held responsible for what comes next," Atlas said, the mockery in his voice twisting Jack's guts. Elizabeth sounded like she was tied down and attempting to escape. Her fear was audible in her rapid and panicked breathing.

"Here we go," Atlas said. Grunts of pain had come into Elizabeth's breathing. "You feel that? I'm moving…the pick…across your eyeball-ah!"

…What the hell?

"Still now, and restin' it on your skull," he finished. Holy freaking crap.

"There's about a bit over a quarter of an inch of bone between the pick and your pre-frontal lobe." Damn it, the man sounded like he was teaching an anatomy class. Hearing this madman talking in Atlas' voice was making chills going up and down his spine. How had he once considered the possessor of that voice to be a friend and ally?

" And that's where this little fellow comes in."

"I don't-" Elizabeth began to protest. She was interrupted by a resounding ping and her cry of pain.

Atlas shushed her like he was comforting a child. "It was just a wee tap, but I don't expect it'll take more than a few of those to reach the meat. And then we might find you a bit less the mule. Where's me Ace in the Hole?"

" I don't know. All right?"

Atlas didn't even wait for her to get done. "You know what else rests in the lobe? Creativity."

" Wha-" Ping! "Ah!"

" Individuality."

Ping!

" Ah!"

" Personality"

Ping!

" Ah!"

"In short, everything that makes you, you," Atlas finished.

Jack had jumped at each ping, imagining a sharp pain behind his eyeball boring into his skull and towards his brain. He had known that Fontaine/Atlas was a manipulative, heartless son of a bitch, but this was a whole new level of evil. Elizabeth's pain was obvious, her breathes labored and fast.

"Ah, I'm just about through now," Atlas crooned. "Last chance, pet. Where…is…the Ace…in the Hole?"

Elizabeth did the one thing that Jack wasn't expecting: she laughed.

"Or what?" Jack could almost feel Atlas' surprise through the audio diary's speaker.

"What? You'll put a hole in my head and take away my memories? You want me to forget all this? You want to make me not care anymore?" A sardonic, mocking edge had come into Elizabeth's voice, something that somehow chilled him more than Atlas' sadistic mockery.

" Go ahead. You'll be doing me a favor."

What…what on Earth had she been through to make her sound like that, to make her wish she could just forget or not care about anything? Didn't she have something worth fighting for, living for?

Then again, did he?

With a roar of frustration, Atlas…did something, it sounded painful, like bones were being broken. "Bring in the monster!" There was a sound of him hitting something, likely Elizabeth.

"You're a regular hero, ain't cha?" There was the accent slipping away again, Fontaine's disguise disappearing with his temper. "Can't risk rippin' the only part a' you that's worth a damn. Well, there more than one way to fry an egg."

Atlas' Irish lilt came back as a familiar sound came in. The double-toned crying of a Little Sister.

" Now, little one…are you familiar with the term 'trans-orbital lobotomy'?"

Jack found himself clenching the audio diary. If that son of a bitch had tortured a little girl, he was going to burn his corpse. Even if a Little Sister could heal the damage instantly, they could still feel pain.

"No…please, let her go," Elizabeth pleaded.

"It's a simple matter," Atlas ignored her pleas. "All I need do is insert this pick into your eye…."

"No…please….Please." Elizabeth was frantic now, begging for the girl. "I don't know anything. I-"

"…and give it a few taps with me hammer." Atlas was not messing around, Jack could hear it in his voice.

"I don't know anything!" Elizabeth screamed.

"Better to show by example." Atlas was going to torture a little girl to get his Ace in the Hole.

Elizabeth was full-out screaming and begging now. "Oh, please! Please don't. I—I don't know anything. I—I don't know! Please!"

With a loud crack, the audio diary broke in Jack's hands, he had been clutching it so hard. The pieces of the diary and its tape slipping through his fingers, Jack collapsed to his knees and just shook.

He jumped when a small hand gently patted him on the back. He looked up at the blond girl, who was smiling at him even as tears slid down her face.

"She saved me," she said quietly. "The pretty lady kept them from hurting me."

Jack felt his anger for Elizabeth melt away, and he hugged the little girl, tears pouring from his own eyes. Whatever Elizabeth was, whatever she had done or seen to make her the woman who told Fontaine to go ahead and stick a pick into her brain, she had enough humanity to care for and save an innocent little girl. And for that, she had been bludgeoned to death.

Since he had arrived in Rapture, all he had seen was a ruthless selfishness, with little to no concern for the innocent, other than to protect them for how much they were worth to one's own interests.

With a start, he realized that the splicers had once been people. People, yes, with all their flaws and crookedness, but people all the same, most of which had come down to Rapture just because they had wanted a better life. Thanks to the evil devices of two men, they had been brought down to the same level as a rabid animal, to kill or be killed. And he had forgotten that simple fact, forgotten that they had once been people, and had begun to see them as animals to be put down. They were victims, all of them, victims that had been caught in the uncaring jaws of this horrible metropolis. And he had forgotten that, and had nearly lost himself in slaughtering them, in making little games for taking them down and killing them.

After letting out his sorrow for Elizabeth, for the little girl in his arms, and for the city, Jack leaned back and smiled at the girl, his nose desperately needing a tissue. He desperately wished that he could thank her without sounding like a freak.

"It's alright, Mr. Bubbles," she said brightly. "The bad man who hurt the pretty lady is dead now, and he won't hurt anyone ever again."

Jack nodded fervently. Glancing down, he noticed that the girl's doll was still in one piece. After he had saved her, he had used a touch of his Incinerate plasmid to reattach the doll's head to its body. No, he hadn't completely lost himself to the slaughter. If he had, if all he wanted was more ADAM to get more plasmids and tonics to kill splicers more easily, he would have straight up harvested the slug from the Sisters. His father was right in one regard: He had made his choices, but his choices had made him.

And he was a savior, first and foremost.

Standing to his feet, hand in hand with the little girl, he walked back to Elizabeth's body. Reaching down, he very gently closed her eyes. If she wasn't in the advanced stages of decomposition, she would have appeared to be merely sleeping.

"Thank you, Elizabeth, for helping me to come here and save them," he thought. With the little girl still at his side, he turned back to the entrance and began walking away.

It was between the two walls that he found another audio diary, which he had missed the first time going through the passage. It was by Deacon Krueger and titled "What a Stink". Jack flicked it on.

" God, what a stench! I'm in here, repairin' this damn hole in the wall, and they haven't even moved Suchong's corpse from his office! Yes, he's been drilled to his desk, good riddance, but is it really that hard to rid of his body? Just send in Steinman or someone to cut him up and take him out. If it's this bad out here, I can only imagine what it'll be like when I fix up the false wall in his office, hide away that big, secret lab he's got in the back. I peeked back there earlier and there's a lot of weird stuff, like this big glass tube called a Vita-Chamber or somethin'. Ryan's payin' me to keep my trap shut and my hands to myself though. Hopefully, the smell of money will get Suchong's stink out."

As the audio diary whirred down, Jack's mind was whirring to life as did hope in his chest.

If Suchong had a secret lab behind his clinic (Mad scientist much?) with a Vita-Chamber, it was likely that it was the prototype, the first. It would therefore be easier to modify, to gain access to whatever part stored the information for the genetic frequencies of the individuals it would bring back to life.

Jack looked back towards Elizabeth's corpse and smiled. He was great at taking life; it was time to see if he had just as much talent at saving it.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Mad Science

Suchong's body was still drilled to his desk, right where Jack had found him the first time. Before he could shield the little girl's eyes, she walked right past him into the room and up to the desk. She glared at Suchong for a moment before rearing her head back as far as it could go and then blowing a very long raspberry at him. Jack snorted and patted the girl on her head.

An idea popped into his own, and he smirked wickedly. After shooing the little girl to a safe distance, he snapped his fingers at the impaled corpse with a glowing-red hand, setting it alight with a flourish. A posthumous "screw you", in place of what should have been an utterly one-sided beatdown. Then again, this was probably better than cold-blooded murder.

"Ooh, marshmallows!" the little girl squealed in delight. She clapped her hands over her mouth in confusion, while Jack just gave her an odd look. What…the hell had the Little Sisters been conditioned to see and say? That was wrong, in so many ways.

Brushing away his amazement at how Rapture never failed to shock him with its unique mixture of depravity and insanity, Jack moved past the desk with its flaming corpse and studied the opposite wall.

This Krueger fellow was meticulous in his work. The cabinets and oven had been set into the wall with the same care that the repairs in the hole in the wall had been placed. The wall itself had been another story. Either someone else had been brought in to color it, or Krueger's expertise lay entirely in repairs and cabinets. It was an off-white color, obviously done with subpar materials, and there was black mold growing over it now. The first time he had come through looking for the second dose of Lot 192, he hadn't even looked that hard. He had only eyes for the vial of bitter-tasting liquid that would give him back control over his plasmids and put some color back into his vision.

Stepping around the glass on the floor, Jack studied the divide between the two halves of the room. The glass, likely a two-way mirror, had separated the room into a doctor's office complete with desk and bookshelves, while the other half was part of a laboratory. The door to the laboratory part was heavily padlocked, which was way more than the rather small collection of chemicals and supplies warranted, especially for a scientist of Suchong's caliber.

Jack approached the wall, noting its uniformity. Taking out his wrench, he began methodically whacking the wall with it, listening for any differences in the resulting impacts. In the middle of the wall, there was a notable difference from the rest, running from top to bottom. Making a mental note to buy more proximity mines at the next Circus of Values to have them, Jack laid out his last three, one just above the counter, one close to the ceiling, and one right in between.

Going back to the desk, where Suchong's makeshift funeral pyre had gone out, Jack motioned for the little girl to take cover behind it along with him. Once they were in position, Jack loaded the launcher with a frag grenade, aimed it, and fired, ducking down as soon as it had left the barrel. He shielded the little girl's body and ears as best as he could.

The blast was much louder this time thanks to the even smaller space. A cloud of obliterated wall plaster and mold burst out from the impact, settling over the rest of the office in a foul-smelling cloud. Snorting to get the noxious particles out of his nose, Jack stood and observed his explosive handywork.

Sure enough, there was a room behind the false wall, which had apparently been a large, two-door entrance to the laboratory. Jack glanced down at Suchong and sneered. Mad scientist to the end: A secret lab, no sense of morality or empathy, an inflated ego, and death by one of his own creations. Cohen could have used the guy for the mad scientist role in his movies; no need to act, just film him going about his daily routine, making horrifying abominations of science and performing bizarre experiments.

The little blond began coughing from the debris. Jack leaned down and gently patted her back until she was done.

"Thank you, Mr. Bubbles," she managed once the foreign particles were out of her lungs. She looked over at the shards of glass littering the ground, and then held her arms up to him. "Uppsies?"

Jack indulged her, lifting her up to sit on his shoulder while he walked over to the newest door in the place. A nice vertical slit had been blasted in the wall, revealing where the old one had opened up. Setting the little girl down on the counter, she poked her head through the gap and looked around while he struggled to get on the surface with all of his equipment.

"There are no bad men, Mr. Bubbles," she said once he had gotten up on the counter. Jack carefully lowered himself through the hole, gently picking up the little girl and setting her down on the floor once he was in. Smiling up at him, she took his hand and began to lead him forward.

The tile floor was patterned just like a chess or checker board, both of which were favorite games of his. Cables crisscrossed across the floor, cabinets had been left open after being ransacked. Someone, likely Ryan's employees, had been in here after Suchong's untimely demise, getting his stuff to a safe location for further research. From the lack of blood, no splicers seemed to have come through here. Still, he tightened the hand that the little girl had a hold of and readied his Sonic Boom plasmid in the other.

After going down a small ramp, Jack found himself walking through a few inches of freezing water. A swipe through it with his free hand and a quick lick confirmed that it was indeed sea water. Jack picked up the little girl again and deposited her on his shoulders, her wet feet dribbling water onto his suit. Ignoring the cold water that saturated his shoes and pant legs, Jack soldiered on.

The window that lined the hall after he turned to the right wasn't the source of the leak. Jack couldn't help but jump as a large, streamlined shadow swept across the hall towards him and vanished. Of all the sea life that passed by and through Rapture, sharks unnerved him the most. Fast, cold, and calculating, they were the epitome of the perfect predator, more so than the larger fish or even the squid or octopi. What better creature could hope to personify his father's philosophy than they?

At the end of the hall was a door and one of those chalkboards with wheels. Jack approached it cautiously, glancing down the hall as it continued to the right again for any threats. Spying none, he turned his attention to the board's chalked contents, which had miraculously survived the moisture.

* Cognitive Conversion * Subject is to undergo a series of  Reconditioning Therapies

Jack felt a chill go up his spine, like how the Winter Blast plasmid did his hands whenever he used it. Beneath the title was a diagram of a human head with the brain prominently outlined and filled in. Two sections of it were made note of: The prefrontal cortex and the visual cortex. Underneath a blank space where something, a photo maybe, had been was a formula he didn't recognize along with more text.

Note—All therapies have been  outlined  in notebook 11A.  Strict guidelines  have been provided.

Jack knew the nature of what was sitting behind that door. What shape it would take, he didn't know. Taking a breath, he walked up to the door and waited for it to slide open.

The door slid up, allowing the shallow water that filled the hall to flow in. Stooping so the little girl wouldn't hit her head, Jack entered the room and looked around.

Almost immediately, a torrent of memories surged through Jack's head. Whatever had been used to make him forget, it was starting to break down. He could remember when his eyes had first looked out upon the world, reaching up to a man and woman, Suchong and Tenenbaum, crying to be picked up. He remembered them standing over him as they poked him with needles to give him the hormones and nutrients necessary to accelerate his growth far beyond normal. He remembered them putting a strange helmet on his head and new things filled his mind, teaching him concepts, words, shooting, hacking, and other things. He remembered cuddling a cocker spaniel puppy and loving it with all his heart. He remembered Suchong testing out the trigger phrase, forcing him to kill his beloved Lucy. He remembered Tenenbaum injecting him with a final needle, going to sleep as Jack, and awaking as Jack Wynand.

With a snap, Jack was back in the present, breathing hard and leaning heavily on the room's desk.

"Mr. Bubbles!" the little girl cried from his shoulder, "are you ok?"

Jack nodded vigorously to dispel her fears before taking her off his shoulders and placing her on the desk. He could remember the room clearly now, and beyond the obvious cracks, small piles of rubble, and few inches of water on the floor, it was exactly the same as before. The desk with its bookshelf and cabinets for documents and storage were right in front of him, where Tenenbaum and/or Suchong made notes and prepared the next round of "treatments". His old bed was right where he had last seen it, the sheets rumpled, the "learning hat" as he had called it right above the pillow, the television set flickering above it, and the medical bag where Tenenbaum had drawn the needle that made him forget it all on the surgical table at its foot. In the back was a sink and the door to the bathroom/examination room. This was the place where his life had begun, and where it had been stolen from him.

"Mr. Bubbles, look at this," the little girl held a piece of paper to his face. "It has Mama Tenenbaum's writing on it!"

Jack took the paper and read it. It was a letter from Tenenbaum to Suchong.

Suchong, of all the things I know, I know this. It is in your power to be different man. What can Ryan take from us that we have not already sacrificed at the alter of discovery? They are children, Little Sisters, and yes, they will forget. But you and I won't…. The memories of what we have done fade only with the dimming of all lights. -Tenenbaum

Jack gave the letter back to the little girl and looked back down the hallway to Suchong's office. What would things have been like if he had joined Tenenbaum instead of continuing down his path? Would Jack and the Little Sisters have been able to forgive him? Had he truly forgiven Tenenbaum for the part she played in creating them and him?

He had no idea, and right now, he had other things to worry about. Picking up the little girl again, Jack ducked out into the hall. He looked back as the door slid down, giving his first home and prison one final and silent farewell. From there, he moved forward.

Another ramp brought them out of the water, and Jack could let the little girl roam around without getting her feet wet and catching a cold. After passing through a large room with hooks hanging from the walls (Jack ignored them as best as he could and hurried along), he found what he had been looking for.

"Vita-Chamber. Stage-1 Prototype," the signs on it announced. The sides to it lacked the ornate curved decorations that had been on the ones out in the city. It was basically just a big glass tube that spat out sparks and arcs now and then. On the adjoining wall was a chalkboard. Above and to the right of the Vita-Chamber's diagrams were notes. Suchong must have loved to put up reminders for himself and/or his assistant; either he himself was forgetful or he thought his assistants were pretty stupid. That certainly wasn't the case for Elizabeth from what Jack had seen and heard.

" Vita-Chamber"  Project—Ryan Industries.

— A combination of  plasmids  reconstructed within a field of  quantum entanglement  results in fantastical  restoration  properties.

Fantastical? Now that there was a funny word.

— I have fast-tracked this project for immediate mass production and distribution throughout Rapture—This completes  Stage One .

They had really done a good job with the distribution part. There had even been a Vita-Chamber in the smuggler's tunnels between Port Neptune and Arcadia.

Note—All chambers must be tuned to  Andrew Ryan's  specific  genetic frequency  before proceeding with distribution.

Thank God their genetic scanners weren't reliable. As Sullivan had put it, "anyone in the ballpark genetically" could bypass those. At the time, he hadn't really thought about that. He just figured that maybe a distant relative was in Rapture and had managed to get on Ryan's good side. In his defense, he had been focusing on survival at the time, plus he had only known about his "English cousins" a short while.

Before getting to work on the Vita-Chamber, Jack decided to have a look around for any tools or other information that would be useful to him. There was an island in the next room, overseen by a security camera. Jack easily hacked it before moving on to rest of the place.

This seemed to be the atrium of Suchong's secret lab. From the chalkboard, it was apparent that he was studying some girl. Alongside a chart featuring dashes and the letters A, C, G, and T over and over was a partially erased DNA helix and an outline of the girl. Over the helix and outline, Suchong had written "Imprinting Solution NOT Found in Genetics". Interestingly, the audio diary that Jack had found with Suchong's body had revealed that the scientist had been having trouble with getting the Big Daddies to imprint on the Little Sisters. A problem that he had unknowingly solved, unfortunately for himself.

On the other side of the board were some chemical models and more notes, none of which pertained to the Vita-Chamber. There was a clipboard with Suchong's logo on it along with what looked like some kind of code. Jack decided that he would try and solve if he had to.

There was a huge screen next to the camera, showing a view of an area that Jack wasn't familiar with. It was centered on some strange new device, something he hadn't seen before. From the static and the flickering, he was just barely able to make out the words "Bad Juju" written in either blood or paint in front of it. Huh, intriguing but not helpful.

On the island alongside an audio diary was a jar labeled Subject Hair Sample along with some papers featuring genetic formulas, notes, and outlines. They had been written on in angry, red pen: No Genetic Link and No Goddamn Causality.

Apparently, Suchong had been trying to use one girl and her genetic code to get the Big Daddies to imprint on the Little Sisters. Either something else was responsible for the bond between the Daddies and the Sisters, or he had succeeded with the genetic imprinting and it had just taken a while for it to set in.

Jack picked up the audio diary after examining the jar and papers. There was no name or picture on it, and its date was January the 14, 1959. Jack clicked it on, and a newly familiar voice came out of the speakers.

" Well, this is it. I've done all I can, done some horrible things, and some amazing ones. How many people can say that they've traveled to a parallel dimension to run errands for a mad scientist? Even if the hair sample I took from Columbia was genetically identical to my own, I did it. I didn't create a paradox by interacting with my past self and Booker, and I learned a few things."

Elizabeth sighed heavily, mental and physical exhaustion evident in her voice.

" When I came back to Rapture the first time, I thought that there was a chance that I would find a way to beat Atlas, Fontaine, whatever his real name is, and get away with Sally. It's like Rosalind said, 'Trading croissants and omniscience for death and mildew'. There's no way I'm getting out of this, no version in which I win out over Atlas. All I can do now is hope that somehow, someway, Sally is saved. That sounds more like…a miracle."

The diary came to an end with a whirl. Jack almost reverently took the cassette tape out of its diary and put it in his bag next to the others. He wasn't sure of what Elizabeth had meant with some of the things she had said, but she had gone forward to Atlas, even knowing that she was going to die for…Sally.

Hearing someone sniffling, Jack turned to find the little blond right behind him. She was crying again, her huge sky-blue eyes looking up at him, the doll clutched in her arms.

Putting the dots together, Jack picked up a piece of paper and took a pencil out from his bag. He scribbled the word "Sally?" on it and then showed it to the little girl. She cocked her head after sounding out the name, and after a few moments, her eyes brightened and she smiled even as more tears poured from her eyes.

"Sally", she whispered happily, "that's my name." She looked like she would pop with happiness. "That's my name!" she cried, joyfully.

Jack raised a finger to his lips in warning. The little girl-no, Sally, clapped her hands over her mouth and looked around fearfully. When nothing came out of the shadows to menace them, she dropped her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth on her heels, smiling the whole while. He smiled down at her and patted her head before moving on.

The first piece of good news was that Sally remembered her name. Not many of the former Little Sisters could. The second was that he wouldn't have to get a gene sample off of Elizabeth's body; he had a hair sample of hers, though he wasn't sure what exactly had been going on with her, getting it, and this Columbia place. Maybe he could ask her all about that when she was back.

The last room was larger than the others and focused on Big Daddies. Another clipboard with an encoded message lay next to a grease-covered drill, the spread of the stains from the oil onto the counter revealing that it had been there a long time.

Bouncer suits hung from the ceiling on more hooks above a sort of dais, revealing that their use wasn't as macabre as Jack had originally thought. The body of one was displayed behind a glass casing in the opposite wall, like some kind of weird zoo exhibit. For some reason, Jack had always wanted to go to a zoo and see the different animals. Maybe it was a childhood desire that the conditioning hadn't quite wiped out?

Another chalkboard had a complex diagram of a Bouncer's drill along with engineering notes.

– Issue: Hydraulic fluids/gases within drill cause subject to become  unreliable, unstable.

Huh, did Suchong mean the drill or the Big Daddy when he wrote "subject"?

Launching option to be  removed  from drill in future models.

Launching option? At one point, the Bouncers could launch their drills like projectiles? Hell, that would have made them just as bad as a Rosie, maybe even worse. Using the drills laying around the lab as projectiles, that likely would have taken him out in one shot. It would only be one shot, thankfully, unless the Bouncer had a way of retrieving the drill, like a cable or a magnetic device….

Jack shook away his thoughts on improving Bouncers. Who in their right mind would want those things improved, especially after having fought and killed a lot of them?

At the very back of the room was a locked door. It was one of the traditional ones, with a handle and a lock, not one of the automatic ones that made up the majority in Rapture. Jack figured that if worse came to worse, meaning a splicer mob, or a bunch of crazed Big Daddies, or Fontaine, or the ghost of Andrew Ryan himself, he could just break down the door and make a getaway with the gir—with Sally. Dang, it was going to be hard remembering to call her that.

Before turning back to loot all the cabinets and gather everything he might need, Jack noticed an audio diary laying in a locker. He couldn't help but roll his eyes at this point. Some of the diaries he had come across had been made for their owner's ears only as audio memoirs or reminders. Only a few, like Elizabeth's, had been meant to be found and played for other ears.

The audio diary was by the con artist himself, Frank Fontaine, on November the 1st, 1958.

" Suchong, what the hell were you thinking? Drinkable plasmids? We're burning through ten times the amount of ADAM compared to the injectables. And if you failed to notice, them sea slugs ain't exactly growin' on trees. Switch back to the injectables and let the eggheads in marketing worry about selling it to the chumps."

Jack couldn't help but snort, no matter how guttural it sounded. It was funny to know that Suchong had gotten in trouble with Fontaine over something. He could imagine the earful that Suchong was getting down in hell from Fontaine about how his weaponized slave had turned out. Now that was something to smile about.

The thing to frown about was the fact that there weren't any of those drinkable plasmids left. Remembering the pain of sticking his needle into his arm (he had kept the first one from his Electro-Bolt injection for hygienic reasons), he pushed down his sleeves to reveal the scars left on his arms from injecting ADAM and EVE into his body. They were big, circular, gaping things, testaments to how big his ADAM needle and the EVE hypos were. Thankfully, he preferred long-sleeved shirts, so they weren't easily noticeable. Had the EVE been drinkable too? Damn, that would have been so nice.

Now that the area had been secured and searched, and his weapons, bag, and suit left on the island, he could begin work. Sally sat on the pneumo in the atrium and swung her legs while watching Jack gather and organize the stuff he had managed to find in the cabinets and drawers. Diagrams and notebooks that had either escaped notice or had been ignored for some reason. Parts and tools that weren't needed or wouldn't work with any other projects. Suchong was like a packrat, holding on to everything and anything and making a huge mess, but that was perfect for this situation.

Gently opening up the sides of the Vita-Chamber with the help of the tools and diagrams he had found, Jack carefully analyzed the components of the device, making note where each removed part went after taking it out. For once, he didn't have to go on a district-spanning search to find the pieces he needed. No chlorophyll, distilled water, and bee spit for a Lazarus Vector. No pictures of dead ex-disciples for a mad artist's masterpiece. No dangerous parts for an EMP bomb. No turning himself into a bigger freak than he already was to get through a door.

Nope, none of that. Just him, his tools, blueprints and notes, parts, and a device to modify and fix. This wasn't work; this was actually fun!

Once he had located the genetic scanner, he painstakingly removed the hair sample from its jar with a pair of bent needle-nose pliers. He then carefully and meticulously maneuvered the strands into place within the component, his hands steadied by the hacking tonics active in his genes. Once the hair was in place, he put the parts of the Vita-Chamber back together, working quickly but skillfully. He wasn't sure if it was the tonics working or his learned knack with hacking, but he was good at this…what kind of job was he performing?

A mechanic, he was acting as a mechanic. He liked it.

Smiling at this satisfaction of a job well done (hopefully), Jack wiped the grime from his hands and moved the tools and other things off to one side. If this brought Elizabeth back from the dead, he preferred she didn't stumble over his mess when she got out of the chamber.

Sally joined him when he had finished moving the miscellaneous clutter off to the sides, cradling her doll and smiling up at him. Blue eyes suited her so much more than glowing yellow. With the machine in front of him, ready to be turned on, Jack smiled back at her and held up his hand, two fingers crossed over each other. Sally mirrored him with one hand, and he grinned. With a flourish, he re-connected the Vita-Chamber with the power, turning the most amazing of Rapture's machines back on.

With a flash, a single arc of bright lightning appeared in the chamber, lighting up the room like a beam of sunlight that had survived all the way down to the ocean floor. Jack and Sally were forced to cover their eyes from the intensity of the light, which burned even without their long sojourns from the surface. The afterimage that flashed across their eyes in the resulting dark of their eyelids and crossed arms was that of a young woman within the chamber, standing up and alive.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: A Second Chance

Oblivion wasn't that bad, as Elizabeth had learned.

After the darkness had blotted out the green light coming in from the window and the odd glow from the back of Sally's eyes, it was peaceful and quiet. She couldn't feel or move her body, she couldn't smell or taste anything, she both existed and she didn't. There was nothing but herself and the calm of the void.

For the first time since Booker had literally crashed into her life, Elizabeth was at peace. Serenity, tranquility, no violence, no chaos, no death, and no guilt. Her role in the play was at an end, and she was fine with that. Not that she really thought about anything anymore, but that didn't really matter. It was over.

So it was with some shock when the world exploded into chaos, first light and then color blazing through her vision. With a whoosh of nonexistent wind, she was pulled inexorably and rapidly from her resting place, through the Gatherer's Garden dumping ground, through the clinic's waiting room, by Suchong's decomposed corpse, through the false wall, down the twisting hall of his secret lab, by the odd examination room, and into the large, glass tube.

With a jolt, her body came back into existence, energy pulsing through and around it. She could feel every atom in her body vibrating as she was made whole once again. Her cuts sealed, the dent in her skull and brain smoothed out, and the hole behind her left eye filled in with bone. Life coursed through her veins, and she remembered her will to survive, to live.

The process took a mere instant and then it was over. Elizabeth stood in the tube, gasping for breath as she tried to comprehend what had just happened. Realizing how confined the tube was, she hurriedly shoved it open, breathing hard and fast as her heart pounded in her chest like a Motorized Patriot's Crank Gun. She wavered in her stance, muscles trembling from a massive adrenaline surge as she tried to simply balance herself and think.

"Wha-what's going o-on?" she managed as she carefully stepped out of the tube, one hand to her head as her eyes tried to adjust to the sudden light.

"Pretty lady!" Something latched onto her legs and Elizabeth almost kicked it off before realizing that it was a little girl. Realization dawning, she gently moved the child back and looked down into a pair of eyes as blue as the sky, framed by sun-yellow hair.

"Sally!" she cried, kneeling down and engulfing the girl in a hug. "You're safe, you're safe," she repeated, the little girl's arms wrapping around her as far as they could go. Elizabeth could feel tears falling down her cheeks from relief and happiness, and she could feel Sally's getting her blouse wet.

Looking up, Elizabeth saw him.

It was the same man from her vision just before her death, only the light was shining on him instead of outlining his silhouette. He was young, the small amount of residual fat on his high cheek-bones putting him at maybe a year or two older than her. He was broad-shouldered, his form speaking of strength and fortitude. His hair was a dark-blond, its tousled state giving him a rather boyish look. His green eyes were intelligent and wary, a fusion between those of a predator's and a prey's. His large hands hung at his sides, clasping and unclasping like they were restless and needed something to do. Unlike in her vision, his white sweater and pants were ripped and dirty, stained with blood and grime. The rips and tears revealed either bandages or scars, a testament to whatever dangers Rapture now held.

Releasing Sally, she stood and took a few steps towards her savior. She stopped in front of him, her eyes never leaving his face. His hadn't either.

"It's you," she finally managed. "You're him, the Ace in the Hole."

He grimaced when she said, the nickname likely bringing up something painful.

"Sorry, that's all I know you by," she said quickly. She held out her hand. "My name is Elizabeth…DeWitt," she decided. She had only begun calling herself Comstock when she had learned that he had begun going by Booker DeWitt again. "It's good to meet you, Mr….?"

The Ace smiled now, white teeth shining in the light. He shook her hand, which was swallowed up in his own. His grip was strong, yet gentle, his control and awareness of his own strength evident in his every move. He remained silent though.

"Can you not talk?" she asked after he let go of her hand. His smile disappeared, replaced by sorrow. He raised his head and lowered the collar of his sweater with his hands, revealing a massive, fresh scar over his Adam's apple, which was absent.

"Oh God," she said, her hands covering her mouth in horror. "I'm so sorry," she finally managed.

The Ace nodded and shrugged, raising his collar again. Stooping down, he picked up a sheet of paper and a pencil from the floor. There was a pile of stuff all around the walls of the room: Tools, odds and ends of mechanical and electrical parts, blueprints, and notebooks. He had gone through all this trouble to bring her back from the dead?

He wrote something down on the paper and then handed it to her. A single word had been written: Jack. Looking back up at him, she could see that it was a visually-fitting name.

"Jack, huh?" She glanced around at the mess again. It also looked like he was a Jack-of-all-trades, so that made it even better as his name. "That's a nice name, and it certainly fits."

His smile reappeared, and he ducked his head in silent thanks.

"No last name?" His smile disappeared again, and this time his expression was a fusion of sorrow and confusion, with a dash of anger, not directed at her, added in. He shrugged sharply and turned away, signaling that he didn't want to talk about it. Sally followed him, skipping happily.

"…Ok," she said quietly. She was about to follow, when her nose picked something up. Sniffing, she glanced down at her hand and then brought it up to her face, taking a whiff. She gagged when the smell fully registered. The hand that Jack had shook stank of oil, rusting metal, dead fish, and other rotting organic scents. She hurriedly put her hand down and hoped that Jack didn't notice. She had no idea how long he had been down here, but no one should smell like a Big Daddy. Maybe one had fallen on and then bled out all over him?

He hadn't noticed her reaction to his smell, though Sally had looked over at her before resuming her skipping. Elizabeth followed after them.

On the island where Suchong had left her hair sample, there was half a dozen weapons, a research camera, a wrench, a bandolier of EVE hypos, and a large bag close to bursting with its contents. A Big Daddy suit and boots lay on the floor, propped up against the island. The bag reminded her of the smaller one she had used to store her medical kits and ammunition. It, her guns, crossbow, and air grabber were likely still at Fontaine's Department Store in his office, if they hadn't been raided by some splicer.

Jack was looking at the Big Daddy suit, and then at her. He motioned towards the suit, signaling that it was hers if she wanted.

Elizabeth knelt down by the suit and raised one of the arms. The canvas was very thick, providing protection from both the ocean pressure and from attack, but damn, it was heavy! How had Jack managed to move around in this thing? Either he was uncommonly strong, he had a SportBoost gene tonic, or both.

"Sorry, but I don't think I could even move in this thing," she explained as she got up. Jack nodded and then made the same motion towards his guns.

Glancing over them, Elizabeth noticed that those that weren't cobbled together from spare parts had odd modifications and add-ons attached. Apparently, as plasmids and gene tonics had evolved in Rapture, so had firearms evolved to compete against those who favored splicing over weapons.

Remembering her old weapons, Elizabeth chose the pistol, the shotgun, and the crossbow. The pistol was modified with some kind of accelerator on the barrel and a much larger clip, holding twenty-four shots instead of just the standard six. The shotgun sported some green bulbs and pipes leading from them into the gun, gas whistling from them periodically, along with some kind of plate with gears spinning around in it located right where the mechanism for discharging spent shells from the chamber and loading more was located.

The crossbow was a far cry from the one she had used, requiring two hands to hold and cobbled together from spare parts. A wider, secondary set of limbs was set up in front of the first, its function likely to prevent the bolts from breaking upon impact. A large five-bolt clip rested on top of the firing mechanism and flight groove, the mechanisms inside probably for accelerating the bolt and increasing damage. A lever made it clear that the crossbow could be reloaded much in the fashion of some firearms.

How bad had things become in Rapture that such devices had been added to the guns and other firearms? This would have been overkill in Columbia, except in the cases of the Motorized Patriots, the Handymen, and the Crows.

And even then, he still had those scars and bandages….

Remembering her air-grabber and how handy it had been to simply knock out an unaware enemy without needing to engage them, Elizabeth glanced at the wrench, the rust coloring along its head signifying what Jack had been using it for. She suppressed a shudder as she remembered Fontaine striking her with his wrench, killing her. It felt like it had only happened minutes earlier, instead of who knew how much time had really passed. The adrenaline rush from being resurrected was already subsiding, putting a tremble into her body that she hated.

She wasn't out of the woods yet. Now that she was alive again, and still in Rapture, it was best that she used every weapon at her disposal to ensure that she, and Jack, survived this nightmare. Gritting her teeth, Elizabeth picked up the wrench and hefted it as best as she could, needing both hands to wield it.

While she had been choosing her weapons, Jack had found a large doctor's bag with a sling and emptied it, stuffing it with half of his first aid kits along with the ammunition for each of the firearms she had chosen. That done, he picked up the bandolier of EVE hypos and held them up with one hand. With the other, he brought up arcs of electricity and blue energy passing though his veins, before an open flame of blue and green appeared and his skin grew dark and charred with red heat flowing through it. He then pointed at her, a questioning look on his face.

Elizabeth nodded as she divined his meaning. "Yes, I have plasmids too," she answered. She brought up her own hand, allowing frost to overtake it and ghostly vapors to roll off. She changed it to her first and favorite plasmid, Peeping Tom, her entire arm passing out of the visible spectrum. Seeing that was a relief; when she had awoken in that Room, she hadn't been able to use her plasmids at all. That doctor must have done something to her, something the Vita-Chamber had fixed.

Jack nodded in acknowledgement, taking out five of the nine hypos from his bandolier and putting them in the bag before snapping it shut and giving it to her. She slipped it over her shoulders as he began to wrestle his way inside the Big Daddy suit and getting the boots on over his shoes. Once that was done, he slung the bandolier diagonally across his chest, hung what looked like a launcher and a flamethrower over his back, put his bag on the other way diagonally, and then hefted his Tommy gun.

Elizabeth had her new bag slung over her shoulder, the pistol in a side holster on her opposite side, the shotgun over her back, and the crossbow was ready for use in her hands.

Sally made sure that Sarah was secure in her arms.

"Well, that's interesting," a familiar, feminine voice rang out through the silence.

They all jumped about a foot in the air. Jack pivoted towards the entrance on his way down and fired off two short bursts towards the figures at the entrance to the Vita-Chamber room. Incredulity took over his features when he realized that the two red-headed figures hadn't even flinched from his gunfire or appeared to take damage at all.

"Excellent shooting, but no reward for you sir," the male of the two responded.

Elizabeth instantly recognized the pair. "Rosalind! Robert!" she greeted them, staring with surprise. "What are you doing here? I thought you two were done with me after you dropped me off at the lighthouse."

The ginger-haired Edwardian/Victorian twins glanced at each other and then at her.

"Whatever made you think that?" Robert asked.

"After all, you were the one coming back to the place of your demise, not us," Rosalind chided.

"We are here for one more experiment," Robert started.

"And then we may never bother you ever again," Rosalind finished.

"You mean, I'll never see you again?" Elizabeth asked. The Lutece Twins weren't friends of hers, not by a long shot, but they were the only concrete things she had for a long time. They were both calculating, they had helped Comstock build his nationalist, racist city, they only helped Booker and herself enough to figure stuff out on their own, and they had a manipulative streak a mile wi-.

"Wait a minute!" Elizabeth burst out. "You manipulated me into killing Daisy Fitzroy, you bastards! You turned me into a killer so you could have your revenge on Comstock for killing you!"

The twins had the decency to look a little ashamed.

"To be fair, we were trying to help you as well," Robert replied.

"We were planning on getting you out, across multiple realities," Rosalind added.

"But thanks to the way we were killed, doing the deed directly just wasn't an option," Robert continued.

"Giving up our current state wouldn't have helped matters," Rosalind finished.

A loud groan filled the air, interrupting the conversation. Elizabeth was the only one to jump this time, whirling to find the Big Daddy before it could attack. With another start, she realized that Jack had been the one to make the noise. He gave both Elizabeth and the Luteces an annoyed glare, before holding out both arms in a gesture that plainly said "who are these people and what is going on?"

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "Jack, these are the Lutece Twins, Robert and Rosalind," she introduced them, motioning to each one as she said their names. They both nodded their heads to Jack. "They are…acquaintances of mine, and not all there, both figuratively and literally."

Robert gave her a look, prompting Rosalind to elbow him.

"She's not entirely wrong, you know," she told him.

Robert acknowledged that with a curt nod, and their expressions became schooled to their usual calculation.

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Wynand," Robert spoke, drawing Jack's surprised gaze.

"Or should we call you Mr. Jack Ryan?" Rosalind asked.

Jack's expression turned from surprised again to horror to a firm anger. He glared at the Luteces before raising a finger and slashing it across his throat. It was easy to see that he wanted this conversation over now.

Elizabeth couldn't help but stare at him. He was Andrew Ryan's son?!

He certainly had the high-cheek bones, but the rest of his looks must have been from whoever his mother was.

"As you wish," Robert replied.

"As I was saying before," Rosalind continued, "there might be a chance that you never see us again."

"And with that in mind, we decided that we would conduct one final experiment," Robert concluded. A pillow with a little box appeared in each of the Luteces hand, the latter which they opened. "Lighthouse?"

"Or the Chain?"

"What," Elizabeth couldn't help saying.

"Or perhaps the Lighthouse?"

"Nothing beats the Chain."

They were doing the exact same thing that they had done with the Bird and Cage pendants from before, down to who said what. She could remember the worlds where Booker had chosen the Bird and where he had chosen the Cage. It was amazing that she wasn't insane now, having two different memories of the same event, and many more.

Well, she had lost her pendant in the Big Daddy fight in the Toy Department. She hoped that if there were any other versions of herself that were alive and well, they were about to make the same choice that she was.

Walking up to Robert, she plucked the Lighthouse pendant from its box. "I choose this one," she said, pocketing the pendant when she remembered that she also needed to get a new choker.

"Not surprising, not this time," Rosalind said as she closed her box.

"Didn't even need him to make the decision," Robert noted. "Goodbye Elizabeth, and good luck."

They both nodded to her as she stepped back. The lights flickered above them and then winked out. When they came back on a moment later, the Lutece Twins were nowhere to be seen.

"Goodbye," Elizabeth said quietly. She turned back to Jack and Sally, who were staring at the space the Luteces had occupied moments ago. Rapture had strange things, but the Luteces were their own kind of weird.

"I take it that you have a safehouse that we're going to?" she asked them.

Jack looked up at her and then nodded.

"It's where Momma Tenenbaum takes care of us!" Sally piped up, her smile large and happy. Some part of Elizabeth grimaced at that.

"Well," she gestured to the space left open by the Luteces' departure, "lead on."

Squaring his shoulders, Jack strode forward, reloading his Tommy gun as he went along. Sally was right behind him, skipping along, free of danger with Jack and herself. Elizabeth took up the rear, glancing behind them to make sure no enterprising splicer who had figured out how to open the backdoor would get the jump on them.

Up head by the Vita-Chamber, Jack paused by the wall and looked at something hard before shaking his head in disbelief and continuing on. Elizabeth paused by the same spot and saw what he had: The impact points of his two Tommy gun bursts at the Luteces. Both consisted of three or four bullets, both grouped small enough to have gone through a human head. Had the Luteces been corporal, the bullets would have blown their brains out and all over the chamber room. She had seen this kind of accuracy only once before, with Booker.

At the hallway where the examination room was, which she now realized was likely Jack's, there was a few inches of water. Jack helped the barefoot Sally onto his shoulders. He glanced down at her own shoes and made a face. Glancing down at her feet, Elizabeth could see why: her heels would give her no protection from the water and running for long distances was a no-go. She should probably raid a shoe and clothing store when she got the chance.

"I'll be fine," she reassured Jack. "I was dead just a few minutes ago."

Jack raised a finger in acknowledgement and then began trudging through the water, Sally giggling on his shoulders. She could smell him better now, and he definitely smelled like a Big Daddy. Remembering what she had just said, Elizabeth sniffed the sleeve of her blouse and gagged again. She was in no condition to judge Jack for his stink when she and her clothes smelled like a long-dead and still-decaying corpse.

In Suchong's office, they all stopped by his body, still drilled into his desk, and burned to a crisp. Sally, who had decided to keep riding on Jack's shoulders, blew a very loud raspberry, while Jack rolled his eyes and smiled up at her. Elizabeth just stared down at the impaled and burned corpse.

"I saw this happen, you know," she finally said. She pointed to the fake wall. "I was coming out from there. Suchong didn't see me because of the two-way mirror. He was going on about how he was having trouble getting the Daddies to bond to the Little Sisters. If he had known that all he had to do was get the Little Sisters to give just a little of their ADAM to the Daddies…." she trailed off. "Men like Suchong mistake an ounce of empathy for a pound of science," she finally added, quoting herself.

Jack nodded in agreement, his expression thoughtful. He gave Suchong one last glare before going out the door, ducking down so Sally wouldn't hit her head on the door frame. Elizabeth couldn't help but smile at the scene. The created "monster" was far more humane than his creator or his sponsor, or his real father for that matter.

Outside, Jack stopped at the Gene Bank. Slipping the large syringe out of its holder, Jack played a flame along its needle to sterilize it before injecting it into his arm. The only thing that Elizabeth had ever seen Comstock use the banks for was to purchase plasmid upgrades. The bank worked by first analyzing Jack's genetic code and displaying the plasmids and tonics available to him. Jack then chose which plasmids and tonics he wanted active in his slots. The bank secreted an ADAM-based serum, which he then injected into his arm. The serum would interact with his DNA to suppress the tonics and plasmids he hadn't chosen and allowing him to use the ones in his slots.

It was a pretty good system, perhaps the only smart thing about the whole ADAM/plasmid industry.

"Those used to sell upgrades for drinkable plasmids," Elizabeth told him. "Are any of those still around?"

Jack shook his head and made a jabbing motion to his arm. That made sense, given the newsboard at the newspaper kiosk that proclaimed an ADAM shortage was currently going on. Of course Ryan would switch back to the injectables, quantity winning out over quality in wartime.

It was right at the entrance to the clinic that their first obstacle came up. The security camera completely ignored Jack and the Little Sister, but as soon as she came into view, its green light turned white and the whirr as it turned its cyclopean gaze towards her broke the silence. Before she could jump back behind the divider, an alarm began blaring.

Sally squeaked. "Oh no! Hide!"

Elizabeth instinctively turned invisible, hoping that the security bots still used sensors attuned to the visible spectrum. She almost tripped over one of the dead bodies decorating the floor.

Jack shot right by her, going straight to the gene bank. He fumbled and almost dropped the syringe when the bots flew in the door. Elizabeth crouched by the divider, the bots passing within inches of her. Jack quickly plunged the syringe back into his arm and turned back to the bots, watching them intently.

The alarm ended much sooner than Elizabeth had anticipated, the bots whistling as their target had apparently given them the slip. Jack breathed a throaty sigh of relief before focusing on a spot about a foot to her left and flashing a questioning thumbs-up. Elizabeth slipped back into the visible spectrum and nodded.

"I'm ok," she said, "sorry about that. I take it you hacked that camera earlier and set it to identify splicers as enemies?"

Sally looked down at him from her perch. "Oopsy, Mr. Bubbles."

Jack grimaced and nodded. He held up one finger and went back to the bank, readjusting his genetic code once again. That done, he walked back out into the glare of the security camera and after loading a different ammo drum into his Tommy gun, opened fire on the camera. It went down with a burst of sparks. Jack smiled and waved her over.

Holding up a finger again, Jack walked out the entrance and opened fire on something. Whatever it was exploded, and he signaled her that it was safe. A destroyed turret lay across the walkway from them. Jack glanced around before hurrying over to the turret and searching through its ammo container. Elizabeth followed and alternated between watching their backs and observing Jack scrounging through the guts of the machine. She couldn't help but notice that despite the size of his hands and fingers, Jack was very dexterous with them, deftly slipping the recovered bullets into a drum.

That done, he kept an eye on the ground floor as they walked over to a vent much like the one that Sally had been hiding in at Fontaine's Department Store. Jack gently lifted Sally off his shoulders and placed her in, smiling at her as she turned back and waved at them.

"See you back at Momma Tenenbaum's, Mr. Bubbles, Pretty Lady!" she announced before disappearing back into the shadows. Elizabeth felt a bite of guilt as she remembered how she had flushed out Sally from the first ventilation system with burning heat. She had paid her debt to the little girl in full, but the guilt was still there, and as Booker had once said, she was just going to have to learn to live with it.

The staccato bursts of gunfire interrupted her reverie; Jack was opening fire on a security camera situated on the ground floor in the middle of Artemis Suites. Nodding in satisfaction when the camera finally went down, he went down the stairs first, his eyes watching for possible danger while she watched their trail, making sure no one came up behind them.

She was able to suppress her gag reflex when she smelled the stagnant air of Artemis Suites. Burning garbage and oil, rotting corpses, backed-up toilets, it was worse than when she and Comstock had arrived at the Department Store. She was just so used to these kinds of odors from her own explorations of Rapture and Columbia that they didn't register so much anymore. At least in Columbia, there had been plenty of breezes to blow away the scents of death and decay.

Nothing of any real significance happened until they reached Apollo Square.

Elizabeth had seen the horrifying growths, tumors, and mutations on the bodies they had passed, but seeing the same things on a living being, especially one that had been a person once, was a different kind of horrifying.

She and Jack were hiding just out of sight by the entrance to the Square. She was invisible, while Jack had done the same after standing still for a few moments. It was probably some kind of gene tonic, his shift out of the visible spectrum had been different from hers.

The splicer was walking around, dragging a section of pipe around and occasionally banging it around. From what Elizabeth could see of his face, this one had forgone a mask, the corner of his mouth had ripped upwards, exposing his missing and jagged teeth while putting a horrifying half-grin on his face. The eye on the other side of his face bulged out like insect's, far too large for a human's. His nose was twisted at an angle, enlarging one nostril while the other was practically gone. Odd bulges and lumps in his clothes where there shouldn't be any were present on his arms, legs, and torso. He was muttering about his troubles with the ladies, and how Steinman was going to fix him right up.

With the exception of the Frosty's, most of the splicers at Fontaine's Department Store had been identifiable as such thanks to the cosmetic damage on their faces, and their insanity of course. The genetic damage from ADAM had only gotten worse while she had been dead, time and ADAM rotting their DNA into things barely recognizable as human beings.

She felt Jack stirring right beside her, probably preparing to attack. From the number of fresh bodies laying around, she could surmise that Jack had a similar skillset to Booker. Back in Columbia, she had depended on him to get through their enemies, slaughtering them as they stood in their way, mercy not an option with their fanatic loyalty to their Prophet. That was before she discovered her natural aptitude for stealth and enhanced it with Peeping Tom and experience. Now, she could actually help Jack out with this kind of stuff, her way.

She reached up and settled her hand where she had correctly guessed that Jack's shoulder would be, getting his attention.

"Let me take care of this one," she whispered. "It'll be quick and quiet."

She could feel him pause in thought, then nod his entire body so she'd feel it.

Elizabeth crept up on the splicer, turning invisible when he was looking her way and turning visible when his back was turned. As he went around one of the pillars that supported the Square's roof, Elizabeth crouched on the other side of it, watching his white outline walk around it. Turning invisible as he came back into view, Elizabeth came right up behind him, breathed in and out as she felt hefted the wrench in her hands, and then swung as hard as she could.

The wrench literally bounced off the splicer's head as it made contact. He stumbled forward, holding the back of his head and yowling. Before she could bring the wrench back up for a second shot, he shot around and looked down at her, his eyes a mixture of rage and lust as they settled on her.

"Scream for me!" he roared as he raised his own weapon. It was happening too fast for her to react, he was too fast.

The only thing that Elizabeth could think as his pipe began to descend towards her was "Not again!"

Out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning shot by her and hit the splicer, making him spasm and scream incoherently. Elizabeth ducked to one side, giving Jack the opening he needed. Gunfire erupted as he ran forward, Tommy gun blazing. The bullets impacted the splicer with wet, squishy thunks, his ADAM-riddled blood spraying out of the holes drilled in him. He collapsed after a few short bursts, electricity still arcing over his body as he hit the ground.

Jack hurried over to her, stooping down and making sure she was alright. Her heart was pounding as it pumped blood and adrenaline through her body, her hands shaking as the need to either fight or fly was gone. She nodded to Jack's concerned face.

"I'm fine," she managed. She stood to her feet, his large hand steadying her. "I just…before I died…they weren't nearly that tough. Before, that would have knocked him out cold." She sighed as her heart began to calm down. "Survival of the fittest, and I wasn't that fit to begin with. Splicer were just barely tougher than normal people when the war started."

Jack glanced around before guiding her to a small alcove to the side, where several vending machines made their homes. Jack gave her his wallet before heading over to a machine that she wasn't familiar with. After purchasing some ammo from the Ammo Bandito machine (they didn't sell weapon upgrades anymore, pity), Elizabeth joined Jack at the "U-Invent". Elizabeth remembered reading about the scrap metal drives of the Second World War, which Ryan condemned as a parasitic practice. The U-Invent was apparently the Rapture equivalent; put in a number of scrap and other items, and the machine rewarded the donation with a special type of ammo. Looking over the selections, Elizabeth could only shake her head in amazement at the morbid selection. Not even Columbia had gotten that creative with its weapons.

"Explosive buckshot," she said incredulously. Jack nodded and held out a box of said ammo to her. Elizabeth took it and then sat down, opening her bag and seeing just what kinds of ammo she had. The wrench wasn't going to be as much help as she had originally thought.

For the pistol, there were "normal" bullets, anti-personnel, and anti-armor. For the shotgun, there was 00 buckshot, along with explosive and electric. Someone must have really liked buckshot back in the day. The crossbow had bolts, incendiary bolts, and trap bolts. She wondered if there were any laws on the surface that prohibited these types of ammunition, not to mention the modifications made to the weapons themselves.

After getting their ammunition supplies squared away, Jack and Elizabeth continued on their way.

Glancing at some of the fresher bodies that lay around the Square, Elizabeth pointed towards one.

"Your handiwork, I presume?" she asked.

Jack visibly winced and looked away, an odd look crossing his face. Elizabeth had seen it only a few times before on Booker's face, and later on Comstock's. Shame.

What could he possibly have to be ashamed of?

"Jack," she said quietly. When he didn't look at her, she repeated herself. "Jack!"

When he looked at her, she continued. "You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of." She gestured to the bodies laying around. "It was you or them, your life or theirs. When it comes to survival, there are no real choices."

Jack's expression changed, looking like he had bitten into a sour fruit. He turned and began walking towards the tramway to Olympus Heights. Elizabeth stared after him, breaking into a jog when she realized that he wasn't going to stop. She couldn't seem to stop putting her foot in her mouth around him.

Beyond the crashed tram car and the body of the Rosie Big Daddy, there was nothing worth noting in the tram tunnel to the Heights. Elizabeth noticed the Little Sister needle resting besides the Rosie's rivet gun and couldn't help but smile. The son of the biggest parasite in Rapture had given freedom to the lowest of the city's slaves; A merciful death for the Big Daddies and a cure for the Little Sisters.

The bulkhead to Olympus Heights was entered without incident. When she had first arrived, Elizabeth had sometimes wondered how a city like Rapture could function with such small areas and connections. The answer was simple; it was supposed to have a small population. The issue was that a lot of people had come down to Rapture to work their way up from the work forces to the captains of industry. The problem had been that Ryan hadn't made his city large enough, fast enough, turning places like Artemis Suites and Pauper's Drop into slums, a far cry from the paradise he had promised.

The bulkhead opened up to a Bistro, a rest-stop on Olympus Heights' own system of trams and apartment complexes. Elizabeth had eaten at similar places during her time as one of Cohen's disciples. Figuring out the best places to eat had always been a risky endeavor; either the food was excellent and therefore expensive, or it was terrible and therefore cheap. Finding a balance of the two wasn't the easiest thing in Rapture. The extremes of the two were the norm in Andrew Ryan's paradise.

Elizabeth started towards the Bistro, only for Jack to stop her with an upraised hand.

"What's wrong?" she whispered. He pointed to a destroyed security camera lying right in front of them before holding a hand to his ears. Elizabeth did the same.

No Big Daddy groans, no insane voices in the distance, no whirring of security cameras or turrets. Nothing.

It was the calm that settled in just before hell would break loose.

Jack began going through his weapons, switching their ammo to stuff that would be tactically better for a splicer ambush: anti-personnel Tommy guns bullets, grenades of some kind, and napalm. Elizabeth did as well: anti-personnel pistol bullets, explosive buckshot, and incendiary bolts. Jack cycled through his plasmids as well, mentally preparing the order to use them in. When he glanced over at her, she nodded, showing that she was ready for whatever they were about to face.

Jack raised both his hands and crossed them in an X, and an exact copy of himself, sans suit, guns, bag, bandolier, and apparently bravery, right above the stairs leading up to the Bistro.

With a loud cry of "There he is, get 'im," five splicers shot forward and began waling on the copy with their weapons. Within mere moments, the splicers are waling on each other, their blows and bullets having gone through the dummy and hitting each other. Jack ended the fight by firing a single grenade into the mass of infighters.

Screaming about "brain-dead imbeciles", another splicer jumped out from behind a pillar and threw a grenade right at Jack, who simply brought his hand up. The grenade's path turned from an arc into a straight line, shooting towards Jack and stopping right in front of him. Smirking, he made a throwing motion and the grenade shot right at the splicer, hitting him and exploding.

Elizabeth saw her chance and opened fire with the pistol, aiming for his chest and face. Despite her inexperience with the weapon, it was similar enough to the hand cannon that most of the shots she fired connected, bringing him down.

Jack suddenly spun to the opposite side of the room, glaring at a spot before snapping his fingers and engulfing the Houdini splicer in flames just as she finished reforming. She screamed for only a moment before he fired off a bolt of lightning at her and then opened up with the Tommy gun. Her body fell, still burning and arcing.

"Plan B, boys!" someone yelled out. A blue glob sailed out of the Bistro and struck Jack coating him with a blue slime while glowing insects began to fly around him. Out from behind the sides of the Bistro, multiple objects were tossed out. They landed on the ground, stayed still for a mere moment, and then popped up, each revealing a tiny gun barrel. All at once, they opened fire on Jack, targeting only him. Jack roared with pain as some of the bullets penetrated the thick suit he was wearing.

Elizabeth opened fire with the shotgun, discovering in her panic that it operated like a semi-automatic firearm instead of a pump action. Jack zapped another and shot it until it exploded, running for cover, leading the fire of the miniaturized turrets away from her.

As her turret finally exploded, Elizabeth turned to fire on another, just in time to see the familiar warping effect of a Peeping Tom plasmid wearing off just head of him, revealing a splicer armed with what looked like an elephant gun.

"Jack, look out!" she screamed. Jack's eyes snapped forward, just in time for the splicer to open fire right in his face. The back of Jack's head exploded in a cloud of grey and pink. His running feet went ahead of the rest of him, flipping him on his back. His green eyes, now lifeless, stared up at the ceiling.

Jack was dead.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: The Safehouse

With an enraged roar, Jack burst through the doors of the Vita-Chamber just above the entrance to the Olympus Heights sewers and charged straight for the Bistro.

Damn, cheap-shot Houdini splicer! Shooting him in the face with that monster of a rifle, he was going to tear that asshole apart! Ambushing him with some fancy new turrets, he was going to tear them all apart, show this city why he was top-dog down in this hell!

Jabbing a syringe of medical ADAM into his neck and depressing the plunger, he tossed away the first aid kit and readied his chemical thrower, continuing his roar like an insane Big Daddy. He was mad now. Dying always made him angry, and he was going to give those splicers a taste of their own damn medicine.

Right after he made sure Elizabeth was alright, of course. He could hear gunshots and yelling up ahead, and that didn't bode well. If she died, not only was he going to have to make the trek all the way back to Suchong's to bring her back, but she was going to experience dying violently, again. The only person he'd wish the experience of death and resurrection on was Fontaine, and only if he could do it to him multiple times without having to fight his ugly, naked ass.

Rounding the corner of the hall, Jack spotted a splicer almost immediately and twisted the makeshift handle of the launcher. Fiery napalm engulfed the Leadhead splicer, allowing him to use Sonic Boom to send the screaming mutant crashing into a wall. Another jumped from the shadows, shrieking that he had "earned it" and fanning the hammer. Jack responded with a well-aimed Sonic Boom, which severely hurt the second Leadhead's neck. Colliding with the side of the Bistro completely broke it, finishing the splicer off.

Jack rounded the side of the Bistro, fully expecting to find a crowd of celebrating splicers around Elizabeth's corpse. Instead, he found a massacre in the making.

The Houdini splicer who had killed him was teleporting around, shooting his fellow splicer and screaming "not this time!" Something like a green ghostly woman followed him around, whispering into his ear. Good Lord, that was creepy.

Elizabeth was firing off his pistol nonstop at the splicers, which was amazing considering that the little turrets were firing on her and that she should surely have run out of ammunition by now. A swirling blue vortex surrounded her left hand, which now looked like it was made of gunmetal or something, the individual digits resembling gun themselves. Whatever it was, it seemed to be absorbing the bullets fired at her. Damn, now that would be a nice plasmid to have.

Seeing that the remaining splicers, about six, were occupied by the Houdini and Elizabeth's gunfire, Jack opted to begin destroying the mini-turrets. A few quick shots of Electro-Bolt shorted them out, long enough for him to switch over to electric gel for the launcher. When the turrets came back online, Jack summoned another decoy for them to shoot at, allowing him to finish them off without getting drilled full of holes again.

Elizabeth was able to get behind the cover of the entrance's support pillar with his distraction. He heard her call out his name, sounding surprised and beyond relieved.

The splicers had finally managed to bring down the Houdini and were focusing on beating him to a pulp, much like the group he had found in the Grotto after Langford had sent him after that rose. This time, Jack walked right up to them and Sonic Boomed them all right into the wall besides the Circus of Values machine. Switching to the grenade launcher, he fired off two missiles into the group. Once the smoke cleared, it revealed that they were down for good, and that the vending machine was blackened but otherwise undamaged.

Jack could only shake his head. Even with the Machine Buster tonic equipped, the vending machines were impervious to explosives and other weapons. Thank goodness there weren't any splicer equivalents to negate his Damage Research tonic. Without that, splicers were basically walking damage sponges.

"Jack!"

Turning towards the sound of his name, Jack was surprised to have Elizabeth jump on him and wrap her arms around him. He almost shoved her off before remembering that this was a sign of affection. Blushing at the thought, he brought up one hand and awkwardly patted her on the back. She pulled back enough to face him after a moment.

"I saw that splicer kill you," she gasped out. "How are you alive?"

Grinning now, Jack gently removed her arms (she jumped back a little and blushed when she realized how close they had been) and began rifling through his collection of audio diary tapes. Finding the one where Sullivan was talking about the genetic scanners onboard the bathysphere and how they let close relatives through, he put it in his diary player.

After listening to it, Elizabeth could only snort. "The fingerprint scanners in Columbia were better than that," she muttered.

Jack quirked an eyebrow upwards at that. What was this Columbia she kept mentioning?

Elizabeth noticed his questioning gaze and cleared her throat.

"I take it that the Vita-Chambers use the same genetic keys?" she surmised.

Jack nodded and then brought his arms out from his sides and looked all around, like he was gesturing to all of Rapture. The cameras, the bots, the sphere, and the Vita-Chambers, all of it had been subverted by the DNA he shared with Ryan. He had truly been created for the task that Fontaine had given him.

"The first time must have been…" she trailed off. "Shocking," she finally managed.

That was an understatement in every sense of the word. He nodded very empathetically.

"Well then," she continued, reaching into her bag and taking out an EVE hypo. "I'm out of EVE, just let me…." She pushed down a sleeve and hesitantly inserted the needle into her arm before depressing the plunger.

"OWW!" she shrieked as the huge volume of EVE was emptied into her flesh, quickly leaving her arm and spreading throughout her body. Jack was right beside in her a moment, putting a hand on her back to let her know that he was there.

"Son…son of a bitch," she gasped out at last. "That…that really hurt. I miss drinkable EVE already."

He missed it already too, and he had never even had it. He gently patted her and gave her a questioning thumbs-up. She nodded.

"I'll be fine, just give me a moment," she told him. He gave her the A-ok sign and then turned towards the corpses.

He stopped just before he began going through their pockets. He had felt so dirty the first time he had done that, and then it had become just a normal thing. Kill the crazy splicer and then take whatever they had in their pockets to survive. What would Elizabeth think of that, along with stealing from cash registers, safes, and already-dead bodies?

She came into view at his side. He glanced over at her and felt a shiver of relief go through him as she began turning out the pockets of another body. He turned back to the corpses in front of him and got to work, glad to know that he wasn't the only one to know the cost and meaning of survival. Well, at least not survival at all costs.

After looting the bodies, he continued leading her to the Safehouse. He had to choke back a laugh at the face she made when a draft came up from the sewers. Until he caught a whiff and made a close approximation of her expression, to which she laughed. It was a beautiful sound.

She was beautiful, gorgeous in fact. Despite the dried blood and the grimy and ripped clothes, she was a very beautiful young woman. Her shoulder-length, dark brown hair and dark sky-blue eyes were a nice contrast to her porcelain skin and red lips. The latter two were probably due to living down in the sunless Rapture and makeup, respectively, but that wasn't a detractor. And not that he was ogling her or anything, but she had a really nice form under her clothes from what he could tell.

She didn't just have it good in the looks department either, but in the brains department as well. He could see it in her eyes as she looked around, analyzing everything for possible danger or gain. He had also seen how she had conducted herself in combat after he had died. Instead of panicking, she had turned the tables on their foes by first turning the most powerful of them against the rest, and then negating their turrets with that one plasmid while shooting at them. He had to learn where she got those plasmids; they were beyond cool and useful.

Down in the sewers, there was a thuggish splicer with electricity arcing off his body at the entrance to the Safehouse, banging away at the door with a crowbar and demanding to be let in. He sounded like he thought that his wife had locked him out of his house.

Elizabeth took out his crossbow and aimed. The first shot missed the splicer's head by a few inches and let out a small blast of flame where it hit the wall. The Thuggish stopped hitting the door, looked at the remains of the incendiary bolt and its burn mark, and then spun around, just in time for another bolt to hit him right in the eye. He went down with a groan.

Jack gave her a thumbs-up as they approached the door. He didn't miss her smile, or her blush. He couldn't help but find both cute.

After looting and telekinetically throwing the body away, Jack stood at the Safehouse door. Banging twice on the door and letting out a Big Daddy groan, he waited for them to let him and Elizabeth in.

A few moments later, the Little Sister door opened and Sally crawled out.

"Mr. Bubbles, Pretty Lady!" she sang, jumping up and down in joy. "Everyone is waiting for you!" She opened the main door to reveal a happy sight.

Every little sister in the Safehouse, both the twenty-one he had saved, and the eighteen Tenenbaum had freed before his arrival, were assembled. When they had been Little Sisters, they had all looked alike, save for differences in dresses and hair colors. With the slug gone, they had all reassumed their individual characteristics. Their ages ranged from five to nine, either shooting up in height or shrinking. Racially, they were a mixed bag. Instead of a sickly grey, there was white, black, Asian and others from across humanity's rainbow. Ryan hadn't discriminated by race in Rapture, and he had certainly applied the same mindset when making Little Sisters. Their unwashed faces had their own characteristics once again instead of the rounded shapes with those glowing, yellow eyes.

There was only thing that they all held in common, and that was the smile each of them gave him. They were alive and free, and it was because of him. Jack felt a tightening in his chest like his heart was swelling up or something. Something wet trailed down his face, and he realized he was crying. Dammit, this was embarrassing.

And he didn't really care.

As soon as he and Elizabeth had crossed the threshold and Sally had closed the door behind him, chaos broke out. Sally and four of the Little Sister nearest him, the ones who saved him from Fontaine, ran forward and tacked him to the ground. Jack hurriedly dropped his weapons to the side to avoid a nasty accident, doing it discreetly to avoid hampering their celebration. Elizabeth looked on, tears of pure joy in her own eyes.

"Mr. Bubbles is back!"

"Did you get us any pep bars, Mr. B?"

"No silly, he brought back a princess!"

"She doesn't look like a princess."

"Well he doesn't look like a knight, stupidhead!"

"Don't call me a stupidhead, stupidhead!"

"No fighting! Be nice for Mr. Bubbles and the princess!"

If Jack could laugh without sounding like a beached whale choking on a large fishbone, he would have. When Atlas said that the Little Sisters weren't human anymore, he couldn't have been more wrong. He should have realized right there that Atlas was dirty or at least that he was lying about Moira and Patrick; no true parent wishes harm on another's children, especially a father on a little girl.

"Guter Gott, what is this noise?!" burst out a familiar voice from downstairs.

The girls nearest the stairs parted like the Red Sea before Moses as Tenenbaum came up, looking ready to bust one of her own guts.

"I am about to be calling Jack, and here you are fighting and-" she stopped short when she saw himself and Elizabeth, mainly him though. "And where were you being?" she demanded. "I get up, make medicine for you, and then you are gone. Du Unruhestifter," she added in German.

Sally spoke up from her perch on his arm. "Sorry Momma Tenenbaum. I was taking Jack to see the pretty lady."

Tenenbaum looked back at him, mad now. "And you took her with you!? Verdammt it, Jack!"

"Bad word!" a bunch of the little girls chorused. Jack couldn't help but snort at that. Tenenbaum gave them all a stern look at their own giggles before focusing back on him and Sally.

"What is this about a pretty lady?" she asked.

"There was a pretty lady who saved me from the bad man after…somebody died and they took me." Jack couldn't help but notice that Elizabeth winced at this, like she was remembering something painful.

"The bad man broke the pretty lady until she died, and Sir Bubbles brought her back, and here she is!" Sally announced, gesturing towards Elizabeth.

Tenenbaum seemed to actually notice her for the first time. She drew back in surprise and then surveyed Elizabeth with an analytical eye, noting that she had Jack's weapons and the girls were at ease around her. Well, more at ease than they were around most strangers. He was the one getting dogpiled; they were admiring her from a safe distance, except for Sally.

"Miss Comstock," Tenenbaum began, "I was unaware that you were having a hand in protecting one of my little ones. For that, I thank you." She held out a hand to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth took her hand after a moment and shook it firmly. "You're welcome," she replied. "I couldn't let them hurt her, and besides, I owed her a debt."

Both he and Tenenbaum gave her an odd look. Owing a debt to a child? How did that work?

"And please," she added, "don't call me Comstock. My real name is…DeWitt. Elizabeth DeWitt," she announced, looking satisfied at something.

The mysteries wouldn't stop popping up around her, huh?

"Well then," Tenenbaum said, "it is good to be making your acquaintance, Miss DeWitt. It is surprising to see that at least one of Cohen's people had a heart."

"Yes," Elizabeth made a face. "Cohen. I only worked for him because I needed the income and I always enjoyed singing. The arts as a whole, Cohen ruined a good part of them for me."

"I can imagine," Tenenbaum said flatly. Turning to the girls, she clapped her hands, getting their attention. "Little ones, be getting washed up. Scrambled eggs for breakfast!"

The girls cheered and began filing downstairs. Sally and the four other girls reluctantly clambered off Jack and followed after them, looking back at Jack and smiling and waving at him. He waved back, and noticed that Elizabeth was waving too.

"And as for you," Tenenbaum said, giving him a real stink-eye, "my laboratory, now." She glanced over at Elizabeth. "You can come if you wish, I be thinking that it has been long time since your last medical check-up."

Elizabeth's face twitched again. There was a lot of stuff that bothered her, wasn't there?

"I…it has been a long time, yes," she finally answered. Tenenbaum nodded and began going back down the stairs. He gathered up his weapons and they followed after her.

"So, this is what you were up to when you disappeared," Elizabeth asked as they came into view of the main room.

The Safehouse was basically a big maintenance room that Tenenbaum had converted into a makeshift nursery/orphanage/infirmary. Little bunk beds were arranged in rows on side of the room, while the rest was basically a living and play area for the girls. A room off to the side served as Tenenbaum's lab and room. Between the Little Sister vents on the opposite side of the room by his cot were gratings which the little girls were slipping through, probably off to wherever they washed themselves and where Tenenbaum kept her supplies.

Tenenbaum guided them to her laboratory. Her workspace was really just a desk with all kinds of stains and burns on it. Jack couldn't help but wonder (and hope) that none of the more recent ones had anything to do with why Tenenbaum wanted him in her laboratory. Two memories came into mind. The first was of Tenenbaum jabbing that final syringe into his arm, and then waking up as Jack Wynand, farm boy, not Jack, lab rat.

The other was of something Fontaine said: That Tenenbaum ain't what you think. Florence Nightengale, huh? That'll all come crashing down 'fore you can say "canned tomatoes". I've seen good bunco, and I've seen great bunco. But, when you waltz through Rapture and World War Two without even a scratch? You got more than leprechauns watching over you.

No, if Tenenbaum was going to betray him, it would have been when he returned after the showdown with Fontaine and his tour of the areas he had secured to clean out the Gatherer's Gardens of everything he didn't already have with Fontaine's ADAM. He had been completely at her mercy when he slept here the second time, and she hadn't raised a finger against him. She had rewarded him for saving the Little Sisters, and then she had freed him of…of "WYK" and helped free himself of "Code Yellow". She had earned his trust.

"Have a seat please, Jack," she motioned towards her desk while she walked to the cabinets and began rifling through one of the drawers. "I hope you don't mind standing for a moment, Miss DeWitt."

"Elizabeth, please," his companion replied. "And no, I don't mind." She leaned on the wall besides the window to the main room as he leaned his weapons against the desk and sat down on it. "I've been laying down for quite a while now anyway. What's the date? When I was last conscious, it was two weeks into the war."

Tenenbaum looked up from the cabinet at her and gave her an odd look. She told her the date; it had been over a year since Fontaine had brained her.

"1960?" Elizabeth looked like she had swallowed something really nasty. "That's….that's a disturbing thought, an entire year gone like that."

"Be glad you weren't here for most of the war," Tenenbaum replied. "What World War Two had in quantity of horrors, this one made up for in quality." She glanced up again from her rifling of the cabinet. "What is that little girl saying, when she says that Jack brought you back from the dead?"

It took Elizabeth a moment to answer. "Suchong had a secret laboratory behind a false wall in his office. He had a number of projects back there, including the first Vita-Chamber prototype. Jack must have adjusted it to accept my DNA, bringing me back as soon as he turned it on." She glanced at him. "I have to wonder though, why did you help me?"

Jack gave her a look and raised an eyebrow. She was asking the mute guy with a massive scar across his throat?

"He is young man, you are pretty young woman, you do the math," Tenenbaum replied shortly. Elizabeth blushed at that, and he could feel the heat rising in his own cheeks. "But no," Tenenbaum's face softened and she smiled at him. "He is good young man, far more than I could have ever hoped or asked for, and I hope he knows that."

Jack beamed back at her for the praise.

"Ah, here we are." She stood up, an ADAM medical hypo in one hand, casting a purple glow in the office along the green coming in the window.

"What's that supposed to be?" Elizabeth asked, while he nodded in agreement with the question.

"This is a little something I began working on while you were becoming Big Daddy. And now that we are speaking of it," she pointed at Jack's suit, "would you be minding getting out of that suit?"

Jack stood up again and began wrestling his way out, again. The thing provided protection from damage and attacks, but it was a real bitch to get off and on. Unless he was going back out, he was staying out of it.

"I thought of this while you were becoming Big Daddy," Tenenbaum continued. "I was thinking about how your voice box was going to be…modified, and I remembered this little project I shelved so I could be helping little ones. A super-specialized form of medical ADAM." She reached up and tapped two fingers against the ADAM hypo. "From my calculations, this will heal your voice box. It won't be fixing the scar on your throat, but you will have your own voice back. It is the least I can do after all you have done for me and the little ones, and for Elizabeth."

Jack didn't have to think twice about it. He almost ripped his sweater off the way he grabbed his collar and pulled it down, baring his neck.

As Tenenbaum approached, Jack suddenly felt an odd fear settle in his gut as memories played out in his head. Suchong and Tenenbaum standing over him and giving him injections while he cried and reached up for them, too young to understand why they were hurting him or to even question why. Before Tenenbaum could bring the needle up, he quickly raised his hand to stop her.

Tenenbaum stopped short and then gave him an odd look. "What? What is it, Jack?"

Jack silently grabbed the hypo telekinetically from Tenenbaum. Ignoring her surprised curse in German, he plucked it from the air and turned towards Elizabeth. He carefully took the hypo in both hands, and held it out to her, requesting that she do it with his expression and body language as best as he could. He barely knew her, but she hadn't hurt him in the past. Not yet, anyway.

Both Tenenbaum and Elizabeth stared at him before the latter softly took the syringe from his hands. He smiled gratefully and then bared his neck again. He could feel Elizabeth carefully seeking a place to inject the ADAM, touching his neck with her delicate fingertips. An odd shiver raced up his spine at the sensation.

Before it could travel to the rest of his body, he felt first the tip of the needle against his skin, then it broke the surface and lanced into the flesh of his neck. He bit back a cry of pain as the ADAM flowed from the needle into his neck, thankfully in a much smaller volume than the plasmid, gene tonic, and EVE hypos. The needle was withdrawn as soon as the ADAM was fully injected, and she stepped back.

Jack clenched his fists at the bizarre feeling that played throughout the remains of his destroyed voice box, a strange fusion between pain and pleasure. The usual medical ADAM that healed his cuts, bruises, and other wounds always stung as it healed his tissues, followed by relief as the scar tissue formed. This super-specialized serum took both up a notch and mixed them together.

When the sensation finally ceased, he reached up and carefully felt his throat. Beneath the scar tissue, there was the bump that formed the Adam's apple (ha), back in one piece. He swallowed, and then smiled as he felt the bump disappear upwards into his neck before coming back down.

Glancing over at Tenenbaum and Elizabeth, he held up one finger and quickly left the room. Once the door had closed behind him, he leaned against one of the bunk beds and swallowed again before clearing his throat. Now, what were to be his first words with his repaired throat?

How about "Good evening, which one of you fine ladies would care to accompany me to dinner"? He smiled as he imagined how one of his hypothetical "English cousins" would ask them to dinner. Then again, that may be a few decades old.

Then again, when was the last time he had a good laugh? Smiling at an idea that popped into his head, he quickly whispered the words that came along with the joke. Smiling at the fact that his voice was back to normal, he prepared his joke.

Uttering a high-pitched shriek, he turned and tore back towards Tenenbaum's room, pausing only long enough for the door to open. Both women jumped when he came flying back in, looking terrified and horrified out of his mind.

"Tenenbaum!" he cried at the highest pitch he could muster, "what have you done to my voice?!"

The effect was immediate. Elizabeth's face took on a strange fusion of horror and a denied compulsion to laugh, while Tenenbaum could stare at him, her face a perfect blank.

"I sound like Betty Boop!" he added. Thank you, Fontaine, for allowing some culture into the conditioning, you psychopathic bastard.

Elizabeth was now covering her mouth, trying her best not to laugh at his "predicament", while Tenenbaum began muttering and rambling in a mixture of English and German, grabbing a notebook from the cabinet and flipping through it, trying to find where she went wrong.

Jack was able to hold it back for only a moment before he burst out laughing. Guffaws that boomed through the room leapt past his lips, forcing him to crouch over. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed, or if he had ever laughed this hard at all.

"I'm sorry," he managed between laughs. "I-I couldn't resist. It wa-was just too good to pa-pass up," he hiccupped.

Elizabeth joined him now, her laughter a bright and cheery sound, a nice contrast to his own.

He continued to laugh, even when Tenenbaum smacked him over the head with her notebook and cursed him out in German. Elizabeth just laughed harder.

Privately, Jack wondered if she needed this more than he did.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Team-Building

Dinner was an interesting affair, to say the least.

The little girls returned, washed up, and with boxes of eggs in their hands. Tenenbaum evidently stored her supplies behind the grates where the girls could easily reach them and anyone larger couldn't. When asked how she kept the girls from eating all the food, Tenenbaum shrugged and said she kept the sweets and other such stuff in her office under lock and key. For a woman who had only been a caretaker for a year now, she had good instincts for how children behaved.

Jack helped Tenenbaum to make scrambled eggs, allowing Elizabeth to help with settling the girls down. The little girls giggled and bickered while they waited for their dinner. Jack made batch after batch of eggs, flipping them in the pan above the small portable stove Tenenbaum brought out, sprinkling salt and pepper with a flourish like a French chef, making the girls giggle. They loved the sound of his renewed rough baritone, which she did admit sound very nice on him.

By the time Jack got around to making eggs for himself and the two women, most of the girls had finished eating and had gone back to playing amongst themselves. Five of the little girls peeled off to sit by Jack. Elizabeth recognized Sally, while only two of the other four, one in a blue dress and the other in a red, were familiar somehow. The two recognized her, however.

"See!" Sally cried out and pointed to her. "I told you I knew the pretty lady!"

Elizabeth smiled at them. "Please, call me Elizabeth." She cocked her head at the two. "Do I know you two?"

"I'm Leta and this is Masha!" the one in the blue dress exclaimed. Jack started at the latter name and stared at the red-dressed girl like he had just seen a ghost.

Leta didn't notice his reaction and continued excitedly. "You were there in Suchong's lab!"

Elizabeth was aware of the looks directed towards her from both Jack and Tenenbaum. Jack looked like he was connecting the dots to a forgotten puzzle, while Tenenbaum just looked puzzled.

"You were there when we helped Mr. Bubbles and he stopped being a monster!" the other one, Masha, chimed in. "You told us he needed ADAM, and we gave it to him."

"Those little girls, those were you?" Elizabeth was surprised. She hadn't expected to see those particular two Little Sisters ever again. What were the odds?

Oddly, Jack had relaxed upon hearing Masha's tidbit.

"You have been making quite the impression on some of the little ones," Tenenbaum commented, spearing a chunk of egg with her fork. "At the rate Sally here has been telling your story, you will be as big of a hero as Jack here."

Now Jack gave Tenenbaum a look.

"Me, a hero?" he managed to say through a mouthful of eggs. Tenenbaum frowned at him and gestured at his mouth. He shut it and swallowed before continuing. "I, uh, never thought of myself as that."

"Jack, you are hero!" Tenenbaum jabbed her fork in his direction, sending a stray crumb flying. "Not only were you curing little ones, you were following them to be making sure they got into vents safely, and the little one who got you through the Proving Grounds did not even get scratch! If that is not hero, I do not know what is."

"Well, when you put it that way," Jack said as he stuffed another forkful into his mouth. Swallowing, he added, "Then again, since almost everyone in Rapture is sh-"

Jack abruptly remembered that he was in a room full of young children and that five of them were sitting around him and listening to every word he said.

"-nasty, I could be a normal, halfway-decent person and you've simply forgotten what those look and act like," he finished.

Elizabeth smiled while Tenenbaum rolled her eyes and they continued with their meal. The five little girls all sat around Jack with Sally and the other two between him and Elizabeth. The hero worship in the eyes of the five girls and of any of the others when they looked at Jack was beyond endearing.

"Any particular reason why Sally and these ones are so attached to you?" Elizabeth asked after a few moments of silence with the exception of chewing. "You save them from a particularly bad situation?"

"They saved me, actually," Jack replied. "When I was finishing up the fight with Fontaine, he clocked me with a cheap shot, sent me flying across the room. He took his sweet time walking over to finish me off, blathering about how he was responsible for my...creation. Just when he was about to get to mauling me, these five little angels-" He gently ruffled the heads of the girls, making them giggle, "-jumped out of the vents and stabbed him to death with their needles. Ironic justice at its finest."

"Did you get in any whacks with your wrench, by any chance?" Elizabeth asked. "Particularly in the head?"

"That I did." Jack grinned. "Somehow that was more satisfying than the electric gel, the exploding buckshot, or even the bees."

"Bees?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.

Jack raised a hand and the most revolting thing happened. Crusty, leprous growths broke out on his hand, engulfing most of it within microseconds. Elizabeth had enough time to note the the honeycomb shape and structure of the red-brown growths before the worst part kicked in. Out of the individual honeycomb cells, winged insects emerged, born from human flesh instead of an egg in a wax cell. They crawled all over his hand like it was their hive before disappearing back into the cells only for others to emerge.

"Gah!" Elizabeth shot up and away from his hand, sending her plate to crash on the ground. The remainder of her eggs splattered on the floor. "What the hell is that?!"

"Insect Swarm," Jack said, staring at her. "Are you alright?"

"No, I am not!" Elizabeth couldn't stop staring at his hand. "I hate bees, and those ones are crawling in and out of your arm!"

"Ms. DeWitt, please be lowering your voice," Tenenbaum snapped. "You are scaring the little ones."

Elizabeth glanced around and saw that she was right. The ex-Little Sisters were all staring at her, wide-eyed with fright. For the past year, raised voices had meant splicers and danger. For most of them, the nightmare had only stopped not even a day earlier. And the nightmare was only a wall and a door away from beginning anew.

Elizabeth smiled weakly at the girls. "It's ok. I was just...startled." When the girls turned back to their toys, she sighed before bending down and picking up her things. Jack had left some eggs in the pan, thankfully.

"Sorry about that," she said quietly. "Just...please put that away. You'd think I'd be over my fear of bees by now." How long had it been since that first day with Booker, when she had opened a Tear in an elevator just to get rid of a bee? About...two years now? Felt more like two lifetimes ago.

And she had been dead for about half of that time to boot.

"Well," Jack murmured as the bees and honeycomb growths disappeared back into his hand, "I didn't like mice on the surface, and I still don't like them. I can't help but think they're going to crawl up my pant leg or something whenever I see one."

"Thanks," Elizabeth smiled at him. Both for putting away the bee arm and for the fact she wasn't alone in the miniscule fears department.

When she got back to the group with the last of the eggs, Jack was holding out his hand to Sally, apparently asking for her doll, Sarah. The little girl was very hesitant to part with either of the pieces of her doll. Tenenbaum was assuring her that it was alright and that Jack would give it back to her. As she sat down, Sally looked up at her, her big, blue eyes asking whether she should trust Jack with her most precious possession.

"It's ok, Sally," Elizabeth assured her, smiling at the girl. "Jack will give Sarah back to you when he's done."

As Sally acquiesced and gave Jack Sally's plastic head and torso, Elizabeth realized that despite everything she had done to Sally, using her as bait for Comstock, then leaving her in the Department Store to be grabbed by Atlas and his men. Dear God, why was the girl looking up to her? She wasn't a hero, not at all.

Elizabeth cut off her inner turmoil over Sally's apparent admiration of her as she watched Jack deftly handle the doll head and body. For a man with such big hands, he had a talent for handling items, big and small, with a grace and care that belied his build.

Holding Sarah's pieces so that the her neck and the bottom of her head were sticking straight up in one hand, Jack raised his other hand and snapped his fingers, summoning a small flame. He carefully applied the flame to the neck and head, warming the plastic and softening it while avoiding outright melting it. When he was satisfied, he extinguished the flame and rotated the head until the warmed stumps met. He then applied pressure, studied the doll's neck, nodded, and gave the now-whole Sarah back to Sally.

"Here you are, Sally," Jack smiled at her. "Take good care of her now."

"I will, Poppa Jack!" Sally cried as she jumped up and started off for the other girls to show off her fixed doll, the other four following after her.

Elizabeth couldn't help but laugh at Sally's new title for Jack. Once she got a look at Tenenbaum and Jack's expressions though, she abruptly stopped. Jack looked like someone had just slapped him, while Tenenbaum uncomfortably gathered the last of her eggs on her fork, eyes downcast and avoiding Jack's.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the three as they finished their meal. As they got up and began gathering the dishes and utensils, Elizabeth caught on to an important part of the reunion with Masha and Leta.

"How much are they remembering?" she asked, "besides their names and me?"

Tenenbaum sighed heavily. "Sadly, that is the most that any of them have remembered. They are all remembering their names after they are cured, but the mental conditioning has taken away all other pieces of their past." Self-loathing came into her gaze and her voice. "In some ways, what we did to their minds was far worse than what we did to their bodies."

Jack gently placed hand on Tenenbaum's shoulder to comfort her.

"Brigid," he hesitantly said instead of her surname, "it might be better that they don't ever fully remember their pasts."

Tenenbaum batted his hand away and shot around, glaring at him. "How can you say that?" she hissed angrily. "Their bodies are now cured, but their minds are still twisted by me and Suchong's wretched conditioning! How is it better that they are still forgetting?"

Jack sighed and looked her in the eyes. "Because I remember," he said quietly.

"Remember what?" Tenenbaum asked.

Jack looked her steadily in the face. "Everything, Momma Tenenbaum." He raised the pitch of her voice as he said her name, sounding younger than he was.

Horror dawned on Tenenbaum as she realized the meaning of Jack's words. Elizabeth remembered the room where she had found Tenenbaum's last plea to Suchong and that one heart-wrenching audio diary that chronicled the testing of that horrid phrase, and shuddered.

"Oh Jack," Tenenbaum whispered, this time putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alright," Jack said, a thickness in his voice as he laid a hand on hers.. "Just, thanks, for believing in me, in the Medical Pavilion."

Tenenbaum smiled before disconnecting and turning back to collecting the dishes. "We are going to be needing more supplies now that you've doubled the number of little ones here," her tone turning all business. "We need to make enough to last here until we can escape, and then more before we can reach dry land."

"Don't forget figuring out a way to get to dry or where we want to go," Jack drawled as he placed his pile of plates to one side and reached into his pocket. He took out a pack of cigarettes, Nico Time to be exact, and lit one up with a snap of his fingers. He held out the pack to Elizabeth and Tenenbaum.

"We also need to figure out how we're going to do that without alerting the authorities on the surface of Rapture's existence," Elizabeth added as she accepted one. "The last thing we need is for either the Soviets or the US government getting their hands on ADAM, or any of Rapture's technology."

"That, as you say, goes without saying," Tenenbaum muttered. "If we are going to be smoking, please let us be doing that after we've cleaned up and in my room." She nodded towards her closed off office space. "It is bad enough when I was being only smoker around the girls."

After they cleaned up the dishes and inventoried their remaining supplies, Jack, Elizabeth, and Tenenbaum closed themselves off in her office and discussed their plans for acquiring more food and supplies and for escape.. They kept an eye on the girls through the office's window, smoke curling from their mouths and filling the air. Eventually, even they couldn't stand the choking haze and had to leave the room. By that time, the girls were all trying to suppress their yawns and failings.

Tenenbaum declared that it was bedtime for all of them, and despite the sleepy protests of forty little girls, they were all in bed and asleep within an hour. The adults managed to scrounge up three sleeping bags as the cots were all taken up and set them up in the office after the cloud of smoke had dissipated.

Jack and Tenenbaum were asleep as soon as their heads hit their pillows. Elizabeth managed to stay awake for about five minutes, watching the patterns from the light coming in the circular window to the ocean outside. She glanced over at Jack and couldn't help but smile at the sight. Asleep, he looked as youthful and healthy as any young man his age should have been. As handsome as he was, his face was haggard with the stress of surviving in the deadliest city on this particular Earth.

Watching the green-blue light dance on his face, Elizabeth drifted off to sleep, welcoming the dark within her mind as an old friend.

L&L~~L&L~~L&L

"Hope you don't mind me asking, but what exactly are your plasmids? The only one I've recognized is Winter Blast."

After waking up early and a quick breakfast, Jack and Elizabeth had headed out to begin scrounging for whatever odds and ends they could find that would help them. Tenenbaum had the girls going throughout Rapture's vent system to scout around for caches of supplies or juicy tidbits from the splicers' ramblings. If they found anything out, she would radio Jack and Elizabeth about it and give them directions and advice about the area. If needed, they would also take anything found back to the safehouse via the vents.

So far, they had cleaned out the businesses and stores of High Street, which as Jack pointed out could now be renamed "Hell Street". From the audio diaries they found and from the decay and destruction around them, High Street was one of the first places hit by Atlas' army after the Kashmir bombing and it had been hit hard. Dead bodies everywhere, stores long smashed and looted of their original products, barbed wire and splicers lurking in almost every corner.

At one point, she had seen a familiar face: The jeweler of the Golden Rule, basically the apex predator of High Street thanks to his ability to have something of a functioning mind along with a few plasmids. When he recognized Elizabeth however, he completely flipped his lid and attacked. The bright side of putting him down was that most of the Golden Rule's merchandise was still in the store. The man had been paranoid with his security long before the Civil War, saving his life early on and now giving them something to pawn off on the surface.

They stood in front of the elevator connecting High Street to Market Street. High Street was empty of both goods and living things, themselves excepted.

"Actually," Elizabeth brought up a ice-covered hand, "this is Old Man Winter. It was basically the drinkable version of Winter Blast, and it's not ice. It's dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide."

Jack took a closer look at her hand. "It doesn't have Winter Blast's icicles either. Those things hurt like hell."

Elizabeth clenched her fist, icicles growing from the frosty crust. "It does create icicles. They only appear when I'm charging it up for a trap, though."

"Traps?" Jack asked as the elevator dinged and they entered.

"Each of the drinkable plasmids have a charging ability," Elizabeth explained as the doors closed behind them and she pressed the button. "Most of them manifest as a trap that can be laid out in advance. Triggering the trap can have more of an effect than the normal shot of the same plasmid."

Jack snorted and ruefully held up a hand with a small tornado swirling around his fingers. "The only plasmid of mine like that is Cyclone Trap, and all it does is lay down wind traps. I take it that when the war started up, Ryan decided that quantity mattered over quality?"

"I guess," Elizabeth shrugged. "It was two weeks into the war when Fontaine murdered me, and I didn't really see much fighting. I do remember seeing a news bulletin about a plasmid shortage, which was probably caused by the drinkables in the first place."

"Still," the twister in Jack's hand disappeared and a large, dark red globule took its place. Pustules filled with red fluid accompanied it, sprouting out all over his hand. "You think they would have at least tried to keep the injectables from looking like leprosy's uglier big brother."

Elizabeth snorted as the elevator came to a stop and the doors dinged open. They both jumped to the sides in case the sound attracted any splicers. Jack poked his head out after a moment and surveyed the area.

"All clear," he said, putting his gun down. "Anything I should know about this area?"

"Mostly businesses and a couple of residential areas," Elizabeth answered. "There was one of those Little Wonders orphanages. I still can't believe that nobody figured out the connection between the missing orphan girls and the Little Sisters."

"Something tells me that they did alright," Jack said. "They just didn't care because it wasn't their kids being turned into ADAM factories. And what about the rest of your plasmids?"

"Oh, right." This time, Elizabeth turned invisible right in front of Jack, making him jump. "This one is my favorite. I can turn invisible and I can see certain objects through walls." She walked behind him, reappeared, and then tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around and she smirked. "It has gotten me out of so many scrapes."

"What's it called?

At that, Elizabeth felt something that she hadn't in a long time: the rush of heat in her cheeks that signaled the onset of a blush. Hell, she had gone through hell and back, and she was blushing over this?

"Peeping Tom," she finally said. "I found it in a peepshow."

Jack cocked his head to one side in puzzlement.

"A clip joint or a striptease."

Jack's eyes lit up with understanding just before his own cheeks lit up red. "Oh, right. I, um, saw something like that in Fort Frolic." An odd look came into his face, taking the red away. It was a fusion of remembrance, disgust, longing, and sorrow. It cleared after a moment and he motioned for her to continue.

Her hand turned a glowing lime green and a ghostly woman began flying around her fingers. "This is Possession; it turns enemies and machines into allies, except Big Daddies and stronger splicers."

Jack whistled. "Unreal."

Elizabeth nodded and smiled. This time the skin pulled back from her fingers, revealing her gunmetal gray phalanges. A swirling blue whirlpool appeared right at her fingertips. "And finally, this is Ironsides. It takes incoming bullets and turns them into ammunition for my gun."

Jack whistled again. "Now that is a handy plasmid. There an injectable version?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "Sorry, Ironsides wasn't really on the market in Rapture, and none of the others are available anymore."

"Ain't that a bite," Jack sighed. At Elizabeth quizzical look, he translated. "That's too bad."

Glancing outside the elevator doors, Jack looked around again before signaling the all-clear and strolling out into Market Street, Elizabeth watching their backs.

Market Street wasn't as torn apart as High Street was. After the initial attack above, the denizens of Market Street must have left for safer shores. Well, most of them anyway. There were still plenty of corpses lying around, though the majority didn't hold any loot. Now that she thought of it, neither had most of the bodies around the Golden Rule.

"Jack," she lowered her voice, "you remember that most of the corpses up in Hell Street had been picked clean?"

"By that one guy who attacked as soon as he saw you?" Jack was standing in a few inches of water by the window as he slipped the bullets out of a lost Tommy and into one of his own clips. A long line of bullet holes dotted the glass above him, none of them enough to fully penetrate. "What about it?"

"A lot of the bodies down here are the same way," Elizabeth squinted down at the corpse at her feet, "And if I'm not mistaken, a lot of them have similar wounds."

Jack shook the water from his shoes as he walked up the stairs and kneeled by the body. He had seen there injuries before, on others and on himself.

"Heated hooks," he traced over a wound with a finger. "A favorite of the spider-splicers." He frowned as he looked at the other semi-cauterized lacerations on the body before standing up and going over to another corpse only a few yards away. "Oh boy, this is going to be fun."

"What's wrong?" Elizabeth asked.

"Spider-splicers either throw their hooks or slash at you depending on how far away you are," Jack said as he turned his attention to the empty gun the second cadaver held. "All of these wounds were caused by slashing hooks, which means the apex splicer down here likes to get up close and personal."

"Oh," Elizabeth said, glancing around. Splicers were bad enough, crazy splicers doubly so. She couldn't help but notice how quiet Market Street was; it was either the proverbial quiet before the storm, which she had found to be real in both Columbia and Rapture, or it was the quiet caused by fear of an alpha predator.

She and Jack proceeded quietly and carefully through the apartments of the Andalusian Arms complex. There were only two apartments that hadn't been completely looted. One had both a number lock (which Jack hacked) and a pin lock (which she happily picked). The other had three turrets set up so that going after one gave the others plenty of time to fire. While Jack made a run for the one that he had zapped, Elizabeth froze the other two and successfully hacked one of them while Jack finished up with the last one.

They happened to make a pretty good team.

They passed by the water feature that proclaimed "Art, Science, Industry" after leaving the Andalusian. A body lay in the lowest tier, the water fetid from its decomposition. Jack found some film on it.

907 Market Street turned out to be a bust, literally in the case of the elevator. Elizabeth supposed that the repairman who had been working on it when she last been there had never finished it.

As they mounted the stairs that led to the Little Wonders "Educational Facility", they heard it at the exact same time: The double-toned voice of a Little Sister, lifted in a heart-wrenching scream, the frustrated growling of a splicer mixed in. Jack took off up the stairs, taking them two at a time with Elizabeth close behind.

Jack ran towards the source of the screams, towards the Little Wonders facility. As he turned the corner, he slid to a stop, mouth open in horror. Elizabeth came up behind him just in time to see the spider-splicer rip its hand out of the Little Sister's abdomen, its prize squirming in its claws.

The moment the ADAM slug was out of the girl, a sickly green mist began pouring from her, momentarily obscuring the splicer. Liz caught a whiff as it dissipated and almost threw up; it stank of rotting flesh, as though the entire decomposition process was happening in mere seconds. As Jack gagged to her right, Elizabeth realized with a new surge of bile that that was exactly what was happening. The Sisters were so dependent on the slugs that removing them not only killed the Sisters, it rotted their bodies away in seconds.

As the mist fully dissipated, it revealed the splicer chucking away the Sister's empty dress and holding the ADAM slug aloft, her eyes and mouth open in pure adoration as she looked up at it. That look after she had committed such a heinous act snapped both Jack and Elizabeth out of their stupor.

"MURDERER!" Jack roared as his left hand blazed with fire. A single snap ignited the splicer, who dropped the slug and began dancing around, screaming in pain. Elizabeth brought her pistol up and began shooting, the rage focusing her mind and eyes on the splicer's chest and head.

"Get your own Little Sister!" the splicer shrieked. "That one was mine!"

Jack's hand lit up with blue arcs and sparks as he readied a lightning bolt. Instead of a splicer, it struck the wall behind his target. The red particles of a Houdini splicer dissipated with a whoosh of rushing air, leaving only the dress, the slug, and bullet-holes in the wall.

Jack swore. "Elizabeth, back-to-back!" He yelled, prepping another lightning bolt and his tommy. Elizabeth shoved the pistol back in its holster and raised the shotgun as she got into position, her back to Jack's.

"Teleportation and spider powers," Elizabeth groaned. "Seen anything like this before?"

"No," Jack said, eyes darting everywhere. "I've never seen two splicer types mix like this. She must have kept to herself, followed her own path of adaptation." He reached into his knapsack and pulled out his camera, hanging it around his neck. "At least I've got something new for the album."

Elizabeth snuck an incredulous glance behind her. "We're in a fight for our lives against a splicer you've never seen before, and you want to photograph it?"

Before Jack could retort, the splicer rematerialized - right above them in mid-air. She kicked both of them as she came down, separating them and knocking them to the ground.

She went after Elizabeth first, only to get a chestful of buckshot. The blast was enough to spin her around and gave Jack the time to get up and hit the "Spider-Houdini" with a lighting bolt. The splicer was stunned long enough for Jack to snap several photos before adding to Elizabeth's second round of buckshot with some tommy gun bullets. Before Elizabeth could get a third round of buckshot in, the splicer teleported.

This time, she rematerialized next to Jack, slashing at him with the hooks. Jack screamed in pain as an 'X' was slashed into his chest before his legs were swept out from under him. He crashed to the ground as the splicer raised both hooks and aimed at his neck. Before she slice his throat open, Elizabeth raised her hand and fired off a burst of Old Man Winter. It struck the splicer, ice burst over her and covering her from head to toe.

Jack skittered backwards until he got to his feet, breathing hard. He raised his hand towards Elizabeth and his wrench flew out of her bag. Grasping it with both hands, he yelled as he brought it down again and again on the frozen splicer until she shattered.

Her head came down to rest at his feet. He glared down at the head before kicking it, sending it flying to smash against the wall next to the Little Sister vent where she had likely dragged the girl from.

"Rot in hell," he spat, breathing like he had just run a marathon.

He glanced towards Elizabeth. Despite her knowledge that he was a good man, that he wouldn't hurt anyone unless they gave him a good reason, she couldn't help but feel a thrill of fear shoot through her.

"Elizabeth, you alright?" he asked, approaching her carefully. She nodded, breathing hard herself. Jack let his wrench slip down through his fingers until he was holding the head. He offered the handle to her. After hesitating for only a moment, she took it.

As they patched themselves up with hypos of medical ADAM from the first aid kits, Elizabeth noticed Jack approaching the ADAM slug where it had been dropped. It had barely moved an inch, the stress of being removed from its host's body almost killing it. It squirmed weakly as he picked it up.

It was a truly ugly creature. About a foot long, it was a dark brown with the exception of the bright orange eyespots, arranged in two rows along its sides. A sucker-like mouth gaped at him, reminding her of a leech's. It continued to wiggle in his grasp before giving a final twitch and going still.

Jack was silent as he held the dead slug. After a few moments, he took out a flask from his bag. Poking a hole right in one of the bigger eyespots on the slug's head, Jack put the flask to the eyespot and squeezed the slug. Raw, unprocessed ADAM, sickeningly thick and green, began to fill the flask.

"What are you doing?" He glanced up at her. She could feel disgust twisting both her face and her voice. "That splicer murdered a little girl to that ADAM and you're taking it?"

"It's for Tenenbaum," he explained. "I have more than enough ADAM from Fontaine, even after I re-visited the Gatherer's Gardens for the Health and EVE upgrades. Besides, I'm not leaving this for some splicer to come and suck out."

Elizabeth grimaced but accepted his explanation. "We'll finish going through Market Street after you're done, then."

Jack nodded in agreement as he squeezed the ADAM out of the slug like an almost-spent tube of toothpaste. His grimace matched Elizabeth's. To think, he had to deal with this temptation of so much ADAM while fighting his way through Rapture. So much ADAM, and all he had needed to sacrifice was a little girl and his soul.

Thank God he was better than that.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Back to Fontaine's Department Store

They found a veritable treasure trove of loot and supplies in the back office of the Little Sisters building. Occupying the top position of the food chain was nice. Jack wondered when in the Civil War his father had exchanged Social Darwinism, which was the backbone to Ryan's philosophy, for actual Darwinsim. Those splicers with the better plasmids and gene tonics won out over those with lesser or no splicing at all.

It didn't matter how smart, strong, fast, or rich one was, if one wasn't spliced with strong enough plasmids or gene tonics, Rapture was their grave.

Jack remembered his father's words to him prior to gaining access to his office: "Rapture is coming back to life. Even now, can't you hear the breath returning to her lung? The shops reopening, the schools humming with the thoughts of young minds? My city will live. My city will thrive. And, when that day comes, we'll use your tombstone for paving tiles."

While Elizabeth was going through the loot, figuring out which they could carry and which they would deposit by a vent for the girls to pick up, Jack picked up a framed photograph from the desk and studied it.

It depicted a pretty blond woman in a black outfit standing just behind a group of little girls. Looking closer, he noticed that the girls' expressions were off. Their faces were done up in white facial paint, and their eyes were far too docile for children. Little Sister conditioning, he realized, just before the slugs were implanted.

Turning his eyes to the blond woman, he frowned and then squinted. The outfit of the Spider-Houdini Splicer had been a ragged, torn version of the woman's. And now that he thought of it, hadn't some of the hairs still attached to her head been blond?

Scowling now, he summoned his telekinesis and sent the photo flying out the door, down the hall to crash against the wall. Elizabeth jumped about a foot in the air.

After getting a scolding from Elizabeth for scaring her and possibly attracting attention, they explored the Satyr Lounge and the Rapture Tribune kiosks. Other than alcohol and old newspapers, there wasn't much.

At the very end of the Street was a curving staircase. Around the middle of it was an old advertisement for Sander Cohen's "Greatest Album Yet!", "Why Even Ask?" 'Buy "Why Even Ask" and invite Sander Cohen into your home today!'

"Oh hell no," Jack said, making a face at the poster. Elizabeth was looking at the poster as well and let out a short laugh.

"How on Earth were you able to stand that guy?" Jack asked, aiming at the poster and setting it alight with a snap of his fingers.

"I needed access to his information network," Elizabeth replied, flipping the burning visage of Cohen the bird.

The staircase led to a long balcony that served as a walkway for a second floor. Unfortunately, the walkway had collapsed and the resulting void was too great to jump across. Only the first residence/business was accessible.

Jack almost didn't see Elizabeth freeze when the door came into view.

"Hey, is everything alright?" he asked peering around her at the door.

Printed on the door was a single name: Booker DeWitt. Underneath, separated by a line and some dots was the name of the business: DeWitt Investigations.

He remembered their brief introduction: "My name is Elizabeth…DeWitt."

Who was this "Booker"? Her father, her brother? Heck, even her husband? If he remembered, she had seemed hesitant to give her last name.

"Um, family of yours?" he asked, hoping he wasn't treading on sensitive ground.

Elizabeth glanced back at him and he couldn't help but flinch. Her face had turned hard as granite, the blue in her eyes as cold as ice, her entire profile radiating with a chilling rage.

"He was an imposter," she growled, her rage focused not on him (Thank God). "His real name was Zachery Comstock. He took my father's name and fled here to escape his guilt and forget. He dared to tattoo her initials on his hand, where they would fade with time along with his memory!"

His pistol was shaking in her hands before she suddenly calmed down.

"He's dead now," she almost whispered, "and I'm far from innocent myself." She glanced at Jack and then at the door.

"Let's just search it and go," she sighed, "I doubt there's much in there but beggars can't be choosers."

Before Jack could reply, she pushed the door open, disappearing inside. Jack almost bit his tongue to keep from crying out after her. Just going into a room like that wasn't a good thing to do; one never knew what was hiding inside, waiting to spring a trap.

He hurriedly opened the door and then started. Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen in the one-room apartment.

The only light was from the window and it wasn't much thanks to the blinds. A fan hung from the ceiling, leaning to one side and preparing to fall off at the slightest provocation. In the middle of the room and on each wall was a desk, each covered with various appliances and junk. At the back was a bed and some cabinets, all of them wide open and one of them laying on its side. A door, probably to a bathroom, was on the left wall about opposite from the desk. It was a mess, various objects thrown around the room and laying on the floor.

"Elizabeth!" Jack whisper-shouted into the room, "where are you?"

Elizabeth abruptly popped back into existence by the door, aiming her pistol towards it as she made to open it. She raised a finger to her lips to quiet him before easing the door open and peering inside. Once she was satisfied that there were no splicers hiding in the bathtub, she lowered her pistol and motioned Jack inside.

"The room's clear," she said as he closed the door behind him, "far as I can tell, at least one person ransacked the place before realizing that there was nothing valuable here and left."

Jack looked at the pigsty and had to agree with her. The place was an absolute mess. He wandered over to the desk and looked over the papers and odd bits covering it.

The papers were racing forms; gambling was a thing in Rapture, but horse races? Jack wondered if it was something else they raced down here; dolphins, sharks, fish, maybe even Big Daddies?

A desktop calendar lay on its side on the ground. He telekinetically picked it up and set it back on the desk. The date on its front read "1958, 31 December", the day before Rapture went to Hell. On the surface that day, Jack remembered spending New Year's Eve with his "parents", completely unaware of the madness that was raging down beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The whole world was unaware of the tragedy and atrocity that was Rapture.

Something glinted at him from under a paper. He moved the racing form to the side and found a badge laying on the floor. Summoning it into his hand, Jack examined the piece of metal. "Pinkerton's National Detective Agency" it read around the number "727".

Jack frowned as studied the badge. He remembered reading about the Pinkertons (that didn't mean that he had actually read it though). They had been a private detective and security agency; they were most infamous for their expertise in breaking up strikes back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Maybe Zachery Comstock had a relative who had been in the Pinkertons? Unless he was old enough to have been one himself. That sounded just like the kind of person to come down to Rapture.

"Hey Elizabeth," he said, "how old was this Comstock guy anyway?"

Elizabeth looked up from the pile of clothes, papers, and other junk she had been going through.

"I'd say about," she murmured as she did some mental arithmetic, "about twenty-eight or so. Why do you ask?"

"Found this old Pinkerton badge," Jack said as he walked over and held it up for her to see, "Comstock must have gotten this from a relative or somethin', cause there's no way he was a Pinkerton agent."

"Actually," Elizabeth replied with an unreadable expression, "the Pinkerton agency is still around, the strike-breaking was just the most famous, or infamous, of their activities. Or so I've read," she added, tracing a finger on the badge's number.

"Huh," Jack said, studying the badge again. "Maybe he was a Pinkerton agent after-"

He paused when his eyes caught something on the wall behind her. He gave her the badge and stepped closer to the wall, squinting in the poor lighting to better make it out.

It was one of those boxes that people kept medals in and which was placed on a wall. What were they called again? Oh yeah, a shadow box. The number seven was prominent among them. Also, some of the insignias reminded him of pictures he had seen(?) of calvary men back during the Civil War.

"Seven and calvary, seven and calvary," he muttered, "why should those words make a connection in my head?"

"The Seventh Cavalry, best known for the Battle of Little Bighorn," Elizabeth sighed heavily before continuing, "and for the massacre at Wounded Knee."

"Oh right," Jack acknowledged, "well, one thing's for certain: These are definitely family heirlooms or something like that." He tucked the badge into his pocket and took the shadow box off of the wall. "Do you think Comstock would mind much if we pawned off his badge and family medals on the surface?"

He turned back to see what Elizabeth thought of the idea, only for his vision to turn white and staticy. Elizabeth was still there, but her outline had become blurred, her voice muted, as though her image couldn't exist in the past, with the ghosts. He slowly lost awareness of her as the memory began to progress.

The figure of a man materialized in a chair behind the desk; he was sleeping on it. Someone began pounding on the door. He started coughing as he awoke; he sounded like he had a smoking problem.

The door opened as the man sat in his chair, still coughing. The figure that walked in the door was familiar, though her gait, swinging her hips around, didn't fit with the person she reminded Jack of.

"We're closed," the man called out as his coughing finally settled down.

"You don't look the sort who can afford to turn down legitimate work," the woman said as she walked over to the window and looked out.

The man, evidently Comstock, groaned as he got to his feet. For being twenty-eight, he sure sounded older.

"What do you want?" he said, rounding his desk to walk up to the woman.

"How about we start with a light?" she replied, holding a cigarette up in the air to be lighted.

Comstock hesitated a moment before walking forward. The woman turned towards him as he approached.

"You got a name, miss?" Comstock asked as he raised his left hand and snapped, bringing a flame to life.

"Elizabeth," the woman replied, taking the man's hand and guiding it to her cigarette. The cigarette was lit and she blew a cloud of smoke out of the side of her mouth while she sized up Comstock. "You can call me Elizabeth."

"What can I do for you?" Comstock asked.

Elizabeth took a picture out of her pocket and gave it to him.

"There's a girl who needs to be found. Maybe you've seen her?" she asked.

"This girl…" Comstock said softly as he looked at the photo, "this girl's dead."

"You know her?" Elizabeth questioned walking away to stand in the middle of the room, facing away from Comstock..

"You'll see dozens of her type down by the docks or the slums in Apollo Square," Comstock said, bitterness in his voice as he looked back up at Elizabeth, "orphans. With Fontaine's charities shut, no place for 'em."

"But her you know?" Elizabeth asked..

"As I said," Comstock said as he took a small object out of his pocket and looked at it sorrowfully, "girl's dead."

"Lost," Elizabeth interjected.

"Look," Comstock started to snap, "I don't know where you get-"

"Lost isn't dead," Elizabeth interrupted, "Name your rate. I will pay you for this work."

She walked back to the door and then turned around.

"But you'd do this one gratis," she added, "wouldn't you?"

"I don't follow," Booker said.

"Something tells me you will," She turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Comstock's image and those of the original positions of the furniture faded out of view as the ADAM memory came to an end.

Jack was suddenly aware of a pair of hands on his shoulders, shaking him frantically.

"Jack! Jack, wake up!" Elizabeth practically screamed in his face. "Oh dear God, please wake up!"

She let go of him abruptly and took out her radio, switching it on. "Tenenbaum, something's wrong with Jack-"

"I'm fine!" he burst out, making her jump about a foot in the air. "I'm fine, it was just a...very intense ADAM memory."

Before Elizabeth could say anything, Tenenbaum's voice came on over the radio. "Fraulein Elizabet, what is going on? What is making Jack wrong?"

Jack took Elizabeth's radio and replied back.

"Nothing's wrong with me, Tenenbaum. Just a strong ADAM memory. I'm fine, we're all fine. Um, how are you?" He couldn't help but wince at the last part.

He could practically hear Tenenbaum rolling her eyes. "Fine. Be making to be careful," she sounded off on the radio.

Jack handed it back to Elizabeth. "Sorry about that," he said apologetically, "that ADAM memory was really tripping."

Elizabeth's confusion at his slang was only momentary. "What did you see?" she asked.

"It was Comstock, I think, and you."

At that, Elizabeth's eyes went wide and her face turned paler.

"Oh," she said hesitantly, "well I was looking for him at the time and that must have been when I found him." She leaned down and picked up the shadow box from where he must have dropped it. "I think it would be poetic justice to pawn both his medals and his Pinkerton badge," she added.

"You were hiring Comstock to look for a lost child, a girl," he continued, "and you sounded so...cold."

What was with this woman? She hates this guy Comstock and yet hires him to find a dead or lost girl. To get back Sally (who was probably said dead or lost girl) she worked for Atlas/Fontaine to spring him and his mob out of some department store. She was apparently both Suchong's lab assistant and Cohen's disciple, she was from some place called Columbia (wasn't that some country down in South America), and two of her friends were crazy-sounding, teleporting, bullet-proof pair of red-headed twins. This had gone far enough.

"Who are you, Elizabeth?" he said, getting in the way of her sudden trip to the door. "Those twins, this place 'Columbia', working for Suchong, Cohen, and Atlas, finding the guy who took your dad's name and hiring him to find a little girl?"

Now that he was started, he couldn't stop talking.

"I didn't ask these questions before because I was just happy to have brought you back from the dead for saving Sally and that my voice was back. Now I want to know-"

He stopped his tirade and took a breath to calm down. He reached down and gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Sorry about that," he apologized, "I think the stress of all of this is finally getting to me. Now, please, what is your story, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth just stood, staring at the ground with the shadow box clutched in her hand. She was silent for the longest moment before finally answering.

"I can't tell you," she said, looking up at him strangely, "you would think I was insane. I'm going to have to show you."

"Show me?" Jack said, raising a confused eyebrow at her, "show me what?"

"Show you the truth," Elizabeth said with a note of finality, "I'll show you everything about my past and a bit more besides." She stepped around him to go out the door.

"Lets get our findings back to Tenenbaum," she continued as she opened the door while holding on to the shadow box hard with one hand, "maybe find some clothes that aren't a complete mess, and then I'll take you to Fontaine's Department Store. Everything should still be there, hopefully."

Jack hurried after her as the door began to close. While not entirely satisfying, answers promised were better than answers denied, after all.

L&L~L&L~L&L

"Well, that's not foreboding at all," Jack quipped nervously.

Fontaine's Department Store loomed over Rapture, just as its former owner had looked over Andrew Ryan's city and desired it. It was as if Neptune himself had risen from a deep slumber beneath the waves only to find that the mortals had, in the ultimate act of hubris, invaded his rightful home and soiled it with a city. Of all the statues in Rapture, this one easily took the cake for "most intimidating".

"Imagine it sunk into that trench right beneath it," Elizabeth replied, "and having to sink into the darkness first to reach it, leaving the city light behind for just one moment."

Jack peered down into the inky blackness and had to suppress a shiver.

"Why did it sink down there in the first place and how," he squinted hard, "is it staying up there with no supports?"

"Ryan used it as a prison for Fontaine's men and sunk it four thousand leagues down," Elizabeth answered, "and as for what's keeping it from sinking again, that's tied into what I have to show you."

Jack sighed heavily. "Just when you think you've heard all the shit that Ryan pulled, he dumps another one in your lap."

Elizabeth let out a snort. "I've been dead for over a year now, so I'm not quite up to date on what else he's pulled."

"We've got time," Jack said, the distance between them and the Department Store slowly decreasing. "For a start, he put a one thousand ADAM bounty on my head. He blew up a submarine that we both thought had Atlas' wife and child inside. He killed the plants in Arcadia and Julie Langford with a poison gas, almost suffocated all of Rapture. And finally, he almost blew up Rapture. Not to mention all the times he sicced his goons on me."

Elizabeth's eyes had widened with each item he listed until she looked quite comical. "He only 'sicced' his goons on me once," she said, shaking her head, "and that was one times too many."

Jack nodded in agreement as a column of lights lit up on the front of the building, leading to a bathysphere dock.

"Good news is," he said as he checked his weapons ammunition, "there's no one left to rule in this madhouse and make our lives miserable."

When the bathysphere door opened up and the air of the Department Store wafted in, they both gagged.

"Holy shit!" Jack coughed, "what is that smell?!"

"This entire building has its own air supply and venting," Elizabeth answered with a nasal tone, her nose held with one hand, "that's the smell of everything and everyone who's died in here, plus the general decay from being a leaky underwater building."

"I hate this city, so much," Jack groaned as he walked out of the sphere. The wooden planks on the floor that made a walkway above the water almost broke under his weight thanks to the rot that had claimed them long ago.

Elizabeth removed her hand from her nose, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to get used to the smell before following after Jack, making sure not to step where he had stepped.

Like High Street and Market Street before it, Fontaine's Department Store was a large open space. Signs proclaiming that the Store was "Closed by Order of the Council" had been slapped on over advertisements and were now threatening to fall off from age. Crabs scittered away through the water as he approached; if he got a craving for crab, at least it wouldn't be too hard to catch one.

The first corpse in the joint, a man who had died sitting down just ahead of them, was easily the most decomposed corpse that Jack had seen yet in Rapture. The eyes were milky-white and unrecognizable and human. The skin was sloughing off, and white bone poked out of the pant legs where little sea creatures had nibbled.

Jack glanced back a the crabs and grimaced. On second thought, he would wait until they were back on the surface for any seafood.

"Is it just me," he asked, glancing around the room, "or is this place in worse shape than the rest of Rapture?"

"It's not you," Elizabeth replied, kneeling down by the water's edge and studying what looked like the beginnings of coral, "the Department Store was ahead of its time thanks to Ryan. When New Years Eve rolled around, this place had a couple of months worth of splicers and decay on the rest of the city."

"Which means Rapture will be looking like this in a few months," Jack concluded, making a face at some barnacles. "Let's make sure that we're out of here before then."

"I'll drink to that," Elizabeth said, "when I have something to drink."

Jack couldn't help but snort.

They scrounged around for a bit, looking for any supplies, though Elizabeth said that it wouldn't be likely that they would find anything. She was right; the only thing they found was a Rapture dollar, in coin form. Jack stuck it in one of his back pockets instead of his wallet; he preferred to keep change separate from cash.

On the other end of the room was a large iron gate that would have been impossible to get over, if it wasn't for the huge hole right in the middle of it. Something large, likely sounding like a whale and wielding a drill, had broken through from the other side. A smashed seal lay on the ground, probably another reminder that the Council had closed the place down.

"At least we don't have to go up and over," Elizabeth said when she saw the hole, "last time I was through here, we needed Air Grabbers to get over the gate."

"Air Grabbers?" Jack asked as he walked between the bent metal of the gate, glancing behind them to make sure that the jail breaker wasn't about to slam them from behind.

"Basically, three hooks set up on a handheld rotor and magnetized," she explained, pointing up at an ornamental light, "perfect for getting to higher ground or riding on the pneumo lines."

"Huh, I'll have to be on the look-out for one of those," Jack quipped.

His short laugh turned into a groan when he saw the divide between them and the other side and the jet of water that sprayed out over the void courtsey of some burst pipes.

"Would those Air Grabbers come in handy for this?" he asked, pointing at the new obstacle.

"That burst pipe was here before," Elizabeth replied, "and I have just the thing."

She raised her hand and aimed, shooting an icy projectile at the jet. As soon as it struck the water, ice spread out from the point of impact, freezing it solid. When the ice reached both sides, the water was frozen into an ice bridge that spanned the chasm.

Elizabeth turned and smirked. "Last time, a passing splicer froze it for us. Not on purpose of course, it was still nice of him."

Jack snorted again. "How come I can't freeze water with my Winter Blast, but you can do that?" He'd tried that multiple times in the past in an attempt to slip up splicers or to at least keep his shoes from getting soaking wet and freezing. It usually just succeeded in leaving a small patch of ice on the water, not the feat of icy wizardry that Elizabeth had just performed.

"Dry ice freezes sea water much better than normal ice," Elizabeth explained, sauntering out onto the bridge. "Is that a tone of envy I spy with my little ear?"

"Yes," Jack answered, starting after her after realizing that he was staring, "yes it is."

On the other side, Elizabeth walked up to the large window and gestured for Jack to join her.

"Look," she said as he came up to the glass, "we're headed to Housewares over there. All we need to do is access the tram system between the buildings. It should be smooth sailing as I've already got Old Man Winter. Last time, we had to fight a bunch of splicers to get it and traverse more broken pipes like that one."

"I take it that the other person of this 'we' was Comstock?" Jack asked.

Eizabeth froze just as quickly as the dry ice had. For a moment, Jack feared that he had just asked a really bad question.

"Yes," she finally answered, her tone an indeterminate mixture of chilly indifference and sorrow. She abruptly turned away from the window and narrowly missed running into Jack on the way to the elevator. "Let's get moving, shall we?"

He stared for a moment before hurrying after her. Note to self: Avoid speaking directly about Comstock.

She was waiting for him in the elevator in front of a big advertisement for Nico-Time cigarettes. A pensive and thoughtful look was on her face, like she was contemplating something of importance that she had brushed off earlier that had just come back to mind. As soon as he had pressed the button and the doors had closed, she finally looked up at him.

"At the bistro, where we were ambushed, how did you do it?" she asked. At his own questioning look, she continued. "I saw you take a bullet from an elephant gun to the face, disappear, and then come back from the dead, roaring with life. If it's the Vita-Chambers, then how?"

Jack studied her good and hard. He had asked her a very personal question back in Market Street, and turnabout's fair play (sometimes). If he was going to trust her, he might as well give her a reason to trust him (not that she didn't already, but still).

"When I was in Port Neptune," he began, "I came across an audio diary by a guy named Sullivan, talking about how the genetic sensors on the bathysphere were only supposed to let Ryan and his inner circle use them. They turned out to be unreliable, let relatives come and go as they pleased. I didn't know what to think of that, so i just didn't think about it at all.

"After...killing Ryan, I listened to another diary, one mdae by Suchong. He talked about how the Vita-Chambers worked, that they had been set to Ryan's DNA…"

The realization stole over Elizabeth's face and he nodded.

"I'm Andrew Ryan's bastard kid," he said, "He got Jasmine Jolene pregnant and then she sold me when I was just a clump of cells to Suchong and Tenenbaum, who Fontaine had tasked to make him an 'Ace in the Hole'. Ryan's Heir, turned against his true father and working as an assassin slave for his greatest enemy. Fontaine must have loved that."

He slammed his fist into the side of the elevator, quivering with anger. Everything he had ever been, everything he had ever known, had been one huge lie. His entire life had been orchestrated so that he would return to this city and kill the man who sired him, and then die at the hands of a liar and schemer, thrown away like an emptied revolver. For all he knew, the only true memories he had was of the plane crashing and the beginning of his journey through Rapture. Could he truly be called a man when so much of his life had been decided for him?

He jumped when a small hand settled on his shoulder. He looked up to find Elizabeth standing right next to him, the comforting hand hers. Her sky-blue eyes peered into his own sea-green, and it was like he knew what she was thinking and feeling. Like she had finally found someone who could understand her completely, and he had found her as well.

I know what you mean, I know how you feel, and I'm here to help you through this crazy show called life. From this point on, we're in this together. Now and forever.

The rest of the world faded away and it was only them, their eyes gleaming into each other's, and her hand on his shoulder. They didn't even notice when the elevator finally stopped and the doors opened.

They did notice the loud, distorted scream that came out of nowhere and utterly destroyed the moment.

Instinctively, Jack grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her into cover right besides him, just in time for an Old Man Winter projectice to fly through the space she had just occupied and slam into the back of the elevator, covering the wall in a layer of frost.

"I cut my strings, you can do it too!" the splicer screamed as more ice projectiles hit the sides of the elevator doors, freezing them open.

Jack poked his head out for all of three seconds before pulling back to dodge another Old Man Winter, but he had seen the splicer. The man's face was craggy and wrinkled, his beard and remaining hair encrusted with snow, his clothes covered with frost, and his eyes glowing balefully at them. Growths that resembled crystals sprouted from his head, shoulder, arms, and legs, steam billowing off them. The air itself was tinged with cold, promising an icy death to the splicer's enemies.

"What the hell is that?!" Jack yelled as more ice accumulated in the elevator, "looks like a demented Jack Frost!"

"It's a Frosty!" Elizabeth yelled back, "fire is the best way to kill it!"

Jack willed fire into his palm and was rewarded with the sight and feeling of heat flowing through his veins and into his hands. Timing it jus right, he stuck out his head again, caught sight of the Frosty, focused on him, and then snapped his fingers.

The Frosty was engulfed in flames, his shouts and taunts devolving into shrieks of pain and fear. Jack snapped his fingers again and brought up his Tommy gun. Bullets slammed into the splicer, sending shards of crystalized ice flying everywhere. The flames died down abruptly, courtsey of the Frosty's powers, forcing Jack to withdraw back into the elevator.

He found Elizabeth loading exploding buckshot into the shotgun.

"That flame thrower of yours would be great for this!" she yelled as she pumped the shotgun, "hit him now!"

Jack hesitated only for a moment, which was covered for by the ice projectiles slamming into their cover. The moment it stopped, Jack popped his head back out and snapped again. This time as the Frosty yelled and hollered, Elizabeth vanished from sight and Jack felt her brush by him. As he readied the chemical thrower with napalm, he heard the shotgun going off, followed by more screams and cracking sounds.

Jumping out of the elevator, Jack found the Frosty was now shooting everywhere but at the elevator, trying to find and kill the invisible Elizabeth. Huge chunk of crystal lay shattered on the ground while flames still licked at the splicer's clothing. Blue blood was spattered on the ground and appeared to be freezing quickly instead of slowly congealing.

Jack applied Incinerate one more time and then let the Frosty have it with the chemical thrower. The splicer wasn't even able to fight back, the steady stream of flame keeping him from shooting back. He tried to run away, only to slip on one of his own crystals and crash to the floor. He thrashed around in agony on the floor, screaming bloody murder, before finally giving up the ghost and going still.

Jack turned off the chemical thrower, noting that the Frosty hadn't needed as much napalm as other splicers did, before looking around.

"Elizabeth, he's down, are you alright?" He called.

Elizabeth reappeared, laying full-length on the ground with her arms over her head and surrounded by icy shards. The shotgun lay on the ground next to her, steam rising from the barrel.

"Your shotgun kicks like a mule with double nought buckshot," Elizabeth groused as she sat up, cupping her shoulder and grimacing, "with explosive buck, it feels like being kicked by a Clydesdale."

Jack couldn't help but laugh.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: Guilt of the Survivor

"Last time I was here, we had to comb over the area to find some Old Man Winter to cross this," Elizabeth explained as she gestured to the torrent of water from the burst pipe, "this time around we don't need to do that."

She raised her hand and shot an icy blue projectile at the cascade, freezing it solid into another bridge. Jack tapped it cautiously with his foot before stepping out and fully putting his weight onto it. He glanced over the side and made a face at the dark chasm below.

"That's convenient for us," he said as they walked by the piano with the mannequin. The mannequin was still standing from the last time she had gone through these parts, though it was now missing its head, and the piano was bearing scorch marks of some kind.

"I can't tell you the number of times I've had to comb through an area to find something or someone before I could leave," Jack continued.

He cleared his throat and launched into his best imitation of Atlas' fake Irish accent, pretending to speak into his radio.

"If you want to use the Emergency Access, you'll be needing Dr. Steinman's key. Never mind that you'll have to scour all of the Medical Pavilion for two plasmids to get to the sorry bugger, or that he can take buckshot and machine bullets to the chest like a tank. Up and at 'im, boyo, Lord hates a quitter!"

Elizabeth couldn't help but burst out laughing at Jack's terrible Irish accent and spot-on imitation of Atlas, even as they made sure that no one was waiting for them in ambush in the Pavilion Station. After all the bullshit he had put them both through as Atlas and Fontaine, it felt good to make fun of the Bronx-born grifter. It was that, or crumble down and cry.

"And that was only the beginning," Jack continued, resuming his normal voice, "At Neptune Port, I had to get pictures with a genetic research camera of Spider-Splicers before some old employee of Fontaine's would let me into the fishery. I was running all over Arcadia and the Farmer's Market to get the components for this resurrection plant juice after dear old Dad killed the trees. Cohen made me kill his former disciples before he would let me leave Fort Frolic."

He paused and screwed up his face in a frown. "All those guns and plasmids, and I was basically just a glorified errand boy."

Elizabeth let out a snort at that as they approached the tram station.

"Now that I think of it," she said, "I had my own to-do list to complete before I could save Sally, and before I came to Rapture, Booker and I had to jump through hoops to get stuff done."

"Booker?" Jack stopped and glanced back at her, raising a quizzical eyebrow, "isn't that your dad's name?"

Elizabeth cursed herself at the slip.

"I, well," she began, "My mother died when I was born, and then I was separated from my father shortly afterwards. We reunited nineteen years later, only we didn't know we were father and daughter. He asked that I call him Booker, and I did so."

She smiled as she remembered when they had taken time to enjoy the sights, sounds, and tastes of Soldier's Field, how Booker had grumpily asked her to call him by his first name instead of "Mr. DeWitt". It was one of the few good times they had experienced in Columbia, a candle flickering in a sea of darkness and blood.

"A short time after we learned the truth," she continued, "he was taken from me. The only friend I had in the world, and I was alone again." Her voice cracked as she finished speaking, and the old pain returned to her heart. She looked to the ground as Booker's face reared up in her memory, drowning with multiple sets of her hands holding him underwater. There were no tears; she had cried them out into the baptismal waters over a year ago.

Jack was silent, and then he reached up and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I know it doesn't really fix anything," he said, "but I'm sorry. That...that must have been horrible."

Elizabeth reached up with her other arm and rested her hand on Jack's, squeezing it gently.

"Thanks Jack," she said softly. They stood like that for a few moments before she cleared her throat.

"Let's, let's get going before we freeze or something," she said, releasing his hand.

Jack nodded, letting go of her shoulder and turning back to the tram sphere. As soon as she was in beside him, he grasped the lever and pulled it back before releasing it. As the machinery began going through the process of getting them to the Housewares Department, something flitted through Elizabeth's mind, something that the Luteces had said in Suchong's secret lab, right after she had been revived in the prototype Vita-Chamber.

"Speaking of fathers," she began as the sphere descended and water began draining in, "I don't wish to bring up a sore subject, but how are you, well, your age? Ryan met Jasmine Jolene after he founded Rapture, fourteen years ago."

Jack stiffened before looking at her, his expression unreadable through the mess of emotions and micro-expressions flitting through his eyes and across his face. He finally sighed as the sphere began moving along its track towards Housewares.

"A few days ago," he began, "I was Jack Wynand, a farmboy in Kansas who lived with his parents,. That life, it was nothing more than a cover story, for myself as well as everyone else.

"Four years ago, Fontaine commissioned Tenenbaum and Suchong to make him a weapon, a failsafe to take Rapture if his current plans fell through. Tenenbaum contacted Jasmine Jolene about helping her become financially independent from her lover, Andrew Ryan. All she had to do was conceive a child with him, and Tenenbaum and Suchong would take it off her hands while it was still just a fertilized egg cell. Thus, I was conceived.

"Thanks to Tenenbaum and Suchong, I was artificially grown at an accelerated rate, programmed with skills, memories, and commands, and with the special access of Rapture and its systems afforded by my half of Ryan's genetic code.

"When I was no more than two, Tenenbaum and Fontaine put me on a sub headed for the surface. There, I was put with my 'parents', Gregory and Rachael Wynand, on a farm in Kansas. The whole time, they pretended to be my parents, waiting for Fontaine to contact them so they could put me on a place and be rid of me.

"The whole time, I had forgotten about Rapture, about my birthplace. I was listening unaware for my 'master' to call me back to my, to smite down my real father and give my inheritance into the hands of a false friend and ally. To be discarded afterwards like a used tool."

Jack stopped as the tram pulled into its station at the Housewares Department. They both peered around to make sure that there was no immediate danger before he turned back to her.

"Tenenbaum freed me from the 'Would You Kindly' trigger phrase," he continued, more more quietly now, "and I freed myself from 'Code Yellow' using Fontaine's own failsafe. I turned the tables on Fontaine and brought him down. And here we are," he finished.

Elizabeth could only stare at him. He had been raised to be the tool and weapon of a master with a short leash and no small amount of tricks to keep him in line. Just like herself, he had been groomed by an evil, powerful madman, to be a tool, to be used and abused, to perpetuate a legacy of blood and death.

There were differences between the two of them, to be sure, between how they were groomed for their roles, what their final purpose had been meant to be, but they were the same. They had only been children, taken when they were helpless and molded to tools of destruction, only to break free and turn the tables on their would-be masters. And now, thanks to each other, they had a second chance to live the lives they should have.

Just as Jack looked away and was about to start walking, Elizabeth came forward and hugged him. He froze from the unexpected contact, but then carefully embraced her as well. Elizabeth could feel the coiled strength in his arms, so powerful and yet so controlled. She was surrounded by the iron bands of his arms, yet she felt safe and secure. He possessed so much strength and power, yet he held back from hurting the Little Sisters when he had every excuse to take what he needed from them. He hadn't needed to save her, yet here she was, alive and with the best protector in the city.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured into his sweater, "someone like you doesn't deserve any of that."

Jack rested his head on the top of Elizabeth's and sighed.

"Yeah, well," he muttered, "if I had been raised by Andrew Ryan, I'd probably wind up just as bad as he was, maybe worse."

"Maybe," Elizabeth said as let go of him, prompting Jack to release her, "but that's not here, possibly not anywhere. I haven't told you most of my story, but there are a lot of things we have in common."

Jack smiled down at her before turning and stepping out of the sphere.

"I look forward to learning what those things are," he said as he brought his Tommy gun to his shoulder, "let's just be glad you're not a member of the 'I-killed-my-dad' club."

Jack's back was to her, so he didn't see the expression she felt come across her face. Despite their benign intention, Jack's words were a punch in the gut. Sorrow and guilt bubbled up in her stomach, bringing a fresh wave of heartbreak. Booker's face beneath the water came up from her subconscious, mixing with Jack's words in a horrid taunt.

Gritting her teeth, Elizabeth banished the pain, the guilt, and Booker's face from her heart and mind, adopting a neutral expression as she hurried after Jack.

She caught up to him, only to find that he was standing in front of the vent where she and Boo-where she and Comstock had first spied Sally, almost stepping on the corpse of the splicer that had been chasing after Sally. He was acting just like he had in Comstock's apartment: Standing still with a slight sway, eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead at something that she couldn't see, head cocked like he was listening to some siren's song, his gun about to slip out of his hands.

Elizabeth waved a hand in front of his face. "Jack?" she asked, already knowing that she wasn't going to get an answer. When he continued to stare, slack-faced at the vent and its surroundings, she stepped back and turned around, sweeping the area with the shotgun. With Jack currently in the midst of someone else's memories, she was stuck with making sure that someone didn't get the drop on them.

In Comstock's apartment, Jack had said that the ADAM memory of herself and Comstock was "very intense". From how he sounded, it wasn't a normal occurrence. If ADAM memories could differ from each other by how much they drew in the person witnessing them, what was the cause? Could it be how recently the memory took place? Or perhaps it was genetic markers in the original host and the new one? Maybe Tenenbaum would have some answers.

With a gasp, Jack came out of the memory and back into reality. He glanced around, jumping a little when he saw her.

"See anything interesting?" Elizabeth asked as she ceased her vigil.

"It was you and Comstock," Jack said, shaking himself like he was trying to cast something off, "you were discussing how to get Sally out of the venting system. Close all the vents and then turn the heat up, flush her out."

A surge of guilt blossomed in Elizabeth's chest, which she beat down. If only she could go back to her younger self and smack some sense into her head. Here was where her quest for revenge began to slip from justice into vengeance, not caring for any innocents (well, innocent, singular) that got in her way. She had more than made up for her actions; if only that could quell the guilt within her.

"Sally was a missing girl," she explained, filling in the gaps in Jack's knowledge of last New Year's Eve's events. "Cohen thought it would be 'art' to put a child in a prison."

Jack made a face.

"I swear," he muttered as he began walking again, "the more you learn about that guy, the more you hate him. At least I don't have to worry about going after him."

Other than the advanced degradation and decay that Fontaine's Department Store was suffering from, the Electronics showroom was mostly the same as when she and Comstock had gone through. There were a few more bodies, more blood splatters, more rubble, and the flooded area had grown and wasn't electrified anymore. No matter how far Rapture went down the path of entropy, Fontaine's Department Store would always be ahead of the curve.

"So," she started as they stopped by the busted elevator to go through the pockets of the corpses, "do we want to see if there's anything in the Bistro and surrounding areas, or do we want to go straight for our goal and then get out of here?"

"Hmm," Jack hummed in thought as he slid some bullets out of a revolver, "as much loot as I've found by going through every crack and corner I can find, this is honestly a detour from getting supplies and figuring out a way to escape Rapture. Let's go straight for wherever it is you're taking me and then leave."

"Sounds good," Elizabeth agreed as she placed an EVE syringe in the bag they had picked up for her at High Street, "this part of Rapture makes my hair stand up on end more than the rest."

In the airlock between Electronics and Customer Services, there was no baby stroller that rolled out of the darkness like last time. Elizabeth wondered if that had been the Luteces' idea of a joke. Those two were the worst sometimes.

When the airlock opened up, there was a splicer standing right in front of them. The woman's eyes widened as she began to raise her guns, mouth opening to yell. Before she could pull her gun's trigger, lightning leapt from Jack's hand. The only sound the splicer could make was a stuttering wail as she jerked and convulsed, arcs and sparks flitting across her skin.

Jack raised his Chicago Typewriter and opened up with a sustained and controlled burst at point blank range right into the splicer's center of mass, sending her flying backwards. No sooner had she hit the ground, electricity still sparking off her dead flesh than the shouts began.

"Damnit," Jack growled, "stay behind me and watch my back."

He walked out into the hallway, raising his hand. One of the broken fridge doors came flying off, shooting up to his hand and hovering just beyond his reach. Jack twisted his hand and the door oriented itself to become a shield. From the direction of Appliances, a gun that sounded like a carbine began going off, its bullets slamming into and ricochetting off Jack's impromptu shield.

Elizabeth made sure to stay behind Jack and his shield as he advanced towards Appliances while she watched for enemies coming from Toys and Customer Service. Sure enough, a splicer with a crowbar was advancing on them with a Tommy gun, mouth open in a splintered, grotesque grin.

Thinking fast, Elizabeth summoned her Ironsides plasmid (or was it a vigor?) and brought her borrowed and modified pistol to bear on the insane gunman. She opened fire on him just before he began blazing away at her and Jack.

She could feel the bullets curving away from her and Jack into the maelstrom of blue and white at the end of her hands and disappearing; the weight of her gun stayed the same as she continued to fire back, the incoming bullets filling her gun and ensuring that she wouldn't run out of ammo.

The grin on the splicer's face vanished as he realized that his bullet were somehow having no effect on her, while her own shots were slowly but surely killing him. He stopped firing and turned to run, only for one, two, three bullets to slam into the back of his head, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

Elizabeth looked back at Jack to see how he was doing; his splicer was crawling out from under the fridge door from where he had been thrown by it, only for Jack to open fire on him. Unfortunately, he couldn't see the splicer emerging from behind the Customer Services desk, winding up to bring an axe down on the back of Jack's exposed head.

Without thinking, Elizabeth shot Old Man Winter at the splicer, freezing him solid in mid-swing. His face was literally frozen in a rictus of hate and focus, the speed of the ice preventing him from reacting to the sudden and extreme change in temperature. The handle of the axe stood straight up, the edge of its head gleaming balefully through the ice and mist.

Jack finished up with his splicer, turning around to check up on Elizabeth and spying his would-be attacker.

"Holy shit!" he yelped, jumping back and aiming his gun at the frozen splicer. Realizing that he wasn't immediately in danger, he exchanged his Tommy gun for his wrench and proceeded to quickly and brutally smash the splicer. Chunks of dry ice and frozen flesh scattered across the ground, the axe's metal head shattering as it hit the ground.

"Thanks," Jack said as he lowered his wrench, "that doesn't look like a quick trip to the Vita-Chamber."

"You're welcome," Elizabeth told him, checking the ammo count on her revolver. "At least there aren't as many splicers as there was last time. Quantity is a quality of itself."

A few looted bodies and some ill-gotten money and bullets later, Jack and Elizabeth stood at the entrance to the Toy department. The barricade of heavy appliances and furniture had been moved into two separate piles, likely by Ryan's men when they invaded during New Year's Eve, 1958.

"What's the story behind this?" Jack asked as he popped open one of the ovens to scrounge around for spare parts.

"There was a Big Daddy here in the Toy store last time," Elizabeth explained, "the splicers barricaded it inside. Comstock and I had to go through the Appliances store to find the back entrance."

"Well, good thing whoever moved this stuff put in the bare minimum," Jack grinned as he pocketed the parts and turned to another oven, "I'll just get the spare components from these appliances, and then we can walk into the place like we own it."

"Spare components?" Elizabeth cocked her head, "how are those useful?"

Jack explained how the U-Invent machines worked and what components were accepted and what was exchanged for them as Elizabeth joined in helping find the parts. They talked and theorized how the U-Invents and Power to the People machines worked in Rapture's hyper-capitalistic, profit-focused environment.

Elizabeth was pleased to find that Jack was quite the conversationalist once he actually got talking. Anyone who thought him to be a muscle-bound, gun-toting jock would have been surprised; he was quite intelligent when it came to technical matters, and he showed a lot of potential for philosophy and other fields of study that were based more in theory. It was odd to see the aspects of Andrew Ryan, his skill and talent with engineering and philosophy, in someone who was so unlike him in their compassion, mercy, and morals.

Elizabeth had never met Jasmine Jolene and so had no idea how much of her Jack had inherited, other than his hair color of course. Maybe Jack inherited his compassion from his mother, maybe from one of his grandparents, maybe it was a product of nurture rather than nature, or maybe it was something that was, simply and strangely, only him.

They were inside the Toy store and finishing up with the last of the fridges when Jack tripped the sensor for the Securis door that lead to the venting system controls, where she and Comstock had stood in front of the controls for the thermostat over a year earlier.

Jack peered around the corner into the room, gun ready if an attacker presented themselves, only to go slack-jawed. His gun once again almost fell from his hands as he straightened and stared into the room.

"Oh no," Elizabeth groaned, once again taking up watch to ensure that Jack wouldn't be attacked. Why was Jack getting these ADAM memories from moments in her and Comstock's journey from Market Street to the Department Store? Out of all the people in Rapture, why had Comstock been one of the people he had received recycled ADAM from? What would he think if-

Without warning, Jack spun around, still in the throes of the ADAM memory, somehow keeping from falling over or dropping anything in an amazing show of balance and dexterity. He was now facing the one vent that she hadn't needed to close, the one where Sally had first tried to get out of the venting system before heading for the Central Exhaust.

"Jack?" Elizabeth said, standing to his left and considering if she should try and snap him out of it. She was starting to panic; what if the ADAM memories and the remnants of Jack's mental conditioning were mixing together to trap him in a kaleidoscope of ghostly memories and recollections? Forever experiencing the lives of those whose ADAM he was re-using long after they were dead?

Jack broke into a run, flying down the hall and into the Store, nearly running into one of the mushroom decorations.

"Jack!" Elizabeth cried, running after him, "stop, wait! It's just someone else's memory!"

If he ran into a splicer or group of them, things were going to get difficult fast. For some reason or another, it appeared that Ryan hadn't bothered to install any Vita-Chambers in Fontaine's Department Store, likely because of the high population of splicers and/or Atlas supporters. If he was killed, she was going to have to drag his body within the range of a working Vita-Chamber so he could be revived. If she was killed while he was still dead, there was still a chance that Tenenbaum would work out a way for them to be resurrected, but it would take time and carry risk.

Elizabeth rounded a corner and almost ran into Jack. He was standing right in front of the Central Exhaust, almost stepping on Comstock's corpse. Fear bubbled up in Elizabeth's throat; ever since entering Comstock's office/apartment, Jack had been experiencing moments in her journey with Comstock. If he was witnessing the end of her quest for vengeance-

Jack abruptly snapped out of his trance. He jumped to one side with a yelp, like he was avoiding something. Turning, he brought up his gun, then just as quickly dropped it as he realized that she was the only thing in front of him.

"Elizabeth!" he managed to say, just before slipping back under.

Elizabeth remembered that the Big Daddy who had attacked Comstock had been standing right behind her. Out of instinct, she checked behind herself. Finding no big, metal golem armed with a drill, she quickly scanned over the Toy store. Other than being more run down, it was just as she had left it; a mess of smashed decorations and destroyed toys, a representation of how reality came down onto childhood and utterly crushed it in preparation for adulthood.

Or was that just her projecting how it had been for her? How she had discovered that the world was not the peaceful and idyll illusion that she had grown up under?

"Elizabeth."

Jack had come out of the memory so quietly this time that she hadn't noticed. Indeed, his utterance of her name was so soft that she almost didn't hear it. He just stood there by Comstock's body, staring at the ground, as he hung his gun up on his shoulder by its improvised strap.

"Jack!" Elizabeth ran up to him, checking him over, "are you alright?"

His eyes were unfocused, but it was from the shock of seeing something awful, not the loss of awareness as the memories of the dead overwhelmed one's senses. His body language spoke of someone who had just seen and/or realized something awful.

"I saw you," he almost whispered, "you and Comstock. You told him to turn up the heat, and then did it yourself when he couldn't."

Elizabeth swallowed and raised a hand to his shoulder.

"Jack, I-" she started.

"It burned her," he interrupted, stepping away from her hand, "and you just...sat back and watched while he tried to get her out of there."

"He was suffering through some kind of flashback," his voice began to raise, "and you and those twins just stood there and watched."

"Jack-"

"You just stood there," he slowly brought his arms up, his eyes focusing on her, voice getting louder, "and let that Big Daddy kill him."

"Jack-"

"Sally, she was just your bait," his grabbed her arms just below the shoulder hard enough to make her gasp, his eyes flooding with anger, voice finally crescending into a roar, "to get Comstock killed!"

Jack's eyes blazed into her own, seemingly trying to set her guilty soul aflame. She couldn't move, his grip on her arms was too strong. His face was twisted into a rictus of anger, teeth bared like an angry lion, breath blasting in and out of flared nostrils. Elizabeth felt her fear from earlier return, stronger than ever.

"You used a Little Sister as bait for some trap," he roared, "and then you helped Atlas and his splicers escape this shithole! The war, all the death, it's all your damn fault!"

Elizabeth couldn't speak through the fear, the guilt, and the increasing pain in her arms. This was it. She was going to die, and this time, no one was going to bring her back. She was going to die, again, and rot next to Comstock's corpse in Fontaine's Department Store instead of close to Suchong's in his clinic.

Somehow, Jack's eyes and face softened. His breathing slowed down. He looked down at his own hands, started, and then let go of her. He stared at his hands for a moment, and then looked back up at her. The look in his eyes was still angry, but not like a raging animal's. Stony, icy, hard.

He took a few steps back from her, turned, and started for the entrance, shoulders back and resolute as he walked.

"Jack?" Elizabeth asked, staring after him, a new fear blossoming in her heart. "Where are you going?"

He didn't answer, confirming her fear and increasing it.

"Jack, please don't leave me!" she cried, heart now pounding at the idea of being left alone once again. "Please, I-I'm sorry! Please!"

Jack disappeared behind a corner, leaving her to the dark and cold of the Toy store. Elizabeth backed up, stopping when she felt the railing behind her, and then sliding to sit down. A few feet away, Comstock's corpse lay, the cold having slowed the rate of decomposition, but not enough to disguise the status of his body.

A corpse for company. How fitting in a dying city.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Our Choices Make Us

Jack stormed out of the Toy store, teeth gritted and hands curled into fists as he stalked past the twin piles of looted and ruined appliances.

He should have seen this coming. For crying out loud, Elizabeth had been Suchong's lab assistant; she had probably been supervising the torture and mutilitation of Little Sisters. Hell, she had probably been the one to send that Little Sister to Fontaine's Department Store in the first place, paid off Cohen to send her and this Comstock guy there.

Jack remembered the cold in Elizabeth's voice whenever she had spoken to Comstock in the ADAM memories, especially the hatred in the last one. Somehow, Comstock trying to pull Sally from the vent had triggered some kind of flashback, like he had amnesia or something. Whatever he had done in the past though, he had been trying to save that little girl, only for Elizabeth to get him killed.

And then there was the fact that she then helped Fontaine to escape from his own Department Store and begin his war for Rapture, before giving him the code to override Jack's free will and turn him into a puppet. He should have gone with his initial instincts, let her corpse rot where he had found it. Just because a bad person did one good thing before they died, that didn't absolve them of what they did, didn't erase the bad.

As far as he was concerned, they were done. She had saved Sally from Fontaine, and he had brought her back to life for that. She was on her own now; whether she lived or died, that was up to her.

When he was in the chamber of the airlock, as the door closed behind him, Tenenbaum's voice came on over his radio with a squawk.

"Herr Jack, come in. Where are you being? The girls, they have lost track of you and Fraulein Elizabeth."

He unclipped the radio from his belt to answer, "Sorry Tenenbaum, I got distracted. I'm in Fontaine's Department Store, already headed back."

"Du Dummkopf," Tenenbaum sputtered, "what are you doing there? That is being one of worst parts of the city!"

"I can see that," Jack groused back, "I'm headed back from the rundown Department Store towards the slightly-less rundown city. I'll let you know when I'm out of Fontaine's store of splicers and horror."

"Herr Jack," Tenenbaum interrupted, "where is Fraulein Elizabeth? She isn't answering her radio."

Jack paused before replying back. "She isn't with us anymore, Tenenbaum."

"She is-" Tenenbaum's radio abruptly cut-off. When she came back on, her voice was lowered; some of the former Little Sisters were likely nearby.

"She is dead?" Tenenbaum asked, "Again?"

"No," Jack said as flatly as possible, "She's alive and she is on her own. I saw her in the ADAM memories; she used Sally as bait to get revenge on some guy and then left her. She helped Atlas and his mob escape and told him that 'Would you kindly' would control me. As far as I'm concerned, we're done with her."

Tenenbaum was silent long enough that Jack began to put his radio back on his belt.

"Jack", Tenenbaum's voice was quiet, "In this city, I would not being so quick to judge. Few in Rapture are being far from innocent."

"Well," Jack replied, "seeing as I haven't harvested any Little Sisters and have only killed in self-defense, I'd say I'm the best person in this hellhole to judge anyone."

Tenenbaum was silent again before answering again. "The girls will be disappointed to learn that Elizabeth is no longer with us."

Jack didn't answer as he put the radio back on his belt and flipped the switch to cycle the airlock and let him out.

When the door opened at last, a splicer was standing right in front of him, a look of comical surprise on his twisted face. Jack didn't hesitate. One snap of his fingers and the splicer was engulfed in flames. Screaming, the splicer turned and ran into the large puddle of water by the room's single window.

As soon as the flames were quenched, the splicer rose from the water, now wreathed in steam. He turned around, only for a bolt of lightning to strike the water at his feet. The splicer wailed jerkily as his body convulsed, lightning arcing off his body and the water. He slowly collapsed back into the water as the electricity dissipated, arcs and sparks still buzzing off his flesh.

Jack waited for the electricity to finally die down before grabbing ahold of the man's leg and pulling his corpse out of the water. As he riffled through the body's pockets, his words floated up in his mind.

"...have only killed in self-defense, I'd say I'm the best person in this hellhole to judge anyone."

Jack shook his head to dispel the accusations of hypocrisy that came with the memory. Ok, maybe he was aggressive, but with splicers, there was no other way to deal with them. He had seen that attempting to reason with a splicer was futile the moment he had entered Rapture, courtesy of poor Johnny. Maybe a better phrase for what he did would be "aggressive self-defense" or "premptive self-defense"?

He remembered back when he found Elizabeth's body, when he had realized that he had begun enjoying it when he killed splicers now that he was so much stronger than they were. Since then, he had adapted his tactics to end them as quickly as possible, to avoid toying with them. He wasn't going to allow himself to begin thinking of them as people, as victims of this mad and corrupt city. Down that path lay madness, for what did that line of thinking make him?

After sticking the few dollars he found in his wallet and the pep bar into his mouth, Jack carefully closed the splicer's eyes, which was harder than normal with the misshapen face and muscles, before continuing on.

At the tram sphere, Jack paused again, a thought entering his mind. Tenenbaum's reaction to seeing Elizabeth. There had been recognition and surprise in her eyes and face, but it was a specific type of recognition and surprise. It wasn't like Tenenbaum had personally known her or worked with her before; it was more like she had known of her and was simply surprised to see in her person.

If Elizabeth had been Suchong's lab assistant, then why hadn't Tenenbaum recognized her as such?

Turning his back on the tram, Jack took out his radio.

"Hey Tenenbaum, have a question for you if you have the time," he said into it.

Tenenbaum's reply came through after a moment. "What is it, Herr Jack?"

"I was just wondering," he began, "how well did you know Elizabeth, back when she worked with Suchong?"

He could hear the confusion in Tenenbaum's voice when she replied. "As far I know, Elizabeth was never Suchong's lab assistant. Prior to war, she was just one of Cohen's disciples. Besides, Suchong was going through two or three lab assistants a month; those weren't dying were being fired. Why did you think Elizabeth was Suchong's lab assistant?"

"I heard Atlas say she was in an audio diary." Upon saying that out loud, Jack realized just how trustworthy that bit of info was, coming from Atlas' lips, not to mention the circumstances of the diary's recording.

"Thanks Tenenbaum," he said into the radio, "I'll get in touch with you later."

"Bitte, Herr Jack," Tenenbaum, "Do not be taking too long."

Jack lowered the radio from his mouth and considered his options, glancing between the way he had just come and the tram sphere. Ok, so maybe Elizabeth hadn't been Suchong's lab assistant, but she had still used Sally as bait to trap and kill Comstock, helped Fontaine escape his department store prison, and gave him the trigger phrase to control him. With that list of offenses, not being Suchong's lab assistant wasn't much of a redeeming quality.

Then again, how could he leave Elizabeth here on her own when he was planning on going back to Tenenbaum? Tenenbaum was far from innocent in any of this; she had started the whole thing by discovering the ADAM slug and its properties, taking it and her expertise to Frank Fontaine and Dr. Suchong, her participation in the Little Sisters program, and of course, his creation and alteration. Even if Elizabeth hadn't had come along and released Atlas and his army upon Rapture, something or someone would have come along to upset his father's little paradise. Elizabeth had merely served as a catalyst in that regard.

Therefore, on the grounds of morality, how could he leave Elizabeth alone here in Rapture while accepting shelter and aid from Tenenbaum? If he wanted to maintain his consistency, he had two options: He could either take the Little Sisters with him and leave both Tenenbaum and Elizabeth to atone for their sins in the hell they had both created, or he could forgive Elizabeth as he had (unconsciously) forgiven Tenenbaum.

So, either leave both Tenenbaum and Elizabeth down here in an act of perfidious self-righteousness, or forgive Elizabeth and keep her as a friend? No friends at all in the world vs. two friends. Well, that was an easy choice.

Additionally, the "no friends at all" choice also left him as the sole caretaker of almost forty little girls, and if surviving this city didn't drive him insane, they would.

His decision made, Jack broke first into a fast walk back towards the Toy store, then a run when he remembered that anything could happen when someone was left alone for any amount of time in Rapture.

Even with his Big Daddy suit on, Jack was fast, though very loud. With it on, he had foregone using Wrench Lurker 1 or 2 as they weren't as effective without it. At least if he ran into any splicers, he could just bowl them over like he was a tank or something.

Despite his fast, thunking footsteps, Jack didn't encounter any splicers on his run back to the Toy store. He willed for Elizabeth to be alright as he shot by the thermostat room, almost toppling over as he rounded the corner to stop in front of the central exhaust.

Elizabeth wasn't there. The only sign that she had even been there was her radio, standing upright in front of the railing.

Jack stood there for a moment in disbelief, gasping for breath as his heart continued to thunder in his chest. He glanced around the room for a moment, as though she was going to walk out from behind some broken fixture.

"Elizabeth?" he called, hoping that she hadn't gone far, that she was alright, that he hadn't abandoned her down here to die again. There was no answer.

Turning, Jack put on another burst on speed, sliding to a stop right outside of the store.

"Elizabeth?!" he called out again, "I'm sorry for leaving you alone. Please say something!"

Other than an unsettling laugh and the sudden patter of running feet, there was no answer. Jack took out his tommy gun and pointed it in the general direction of the laugh and footsteps as he backed up into the store. He had long learned that with such noises, ambushes and violence usually followed.

Just in case, he put down a couple of proximity mines at the entrance, along with an EVE syringe's worth of cyclone traps. He would have added some trap bolts to the deterrents, if he hadn't given Elizabeth his crossbow and all its ammo.

The thought that she had it comforted him some, along with the realization that she also had his shotgun and pistol. If something had happened, he would have likely heard the gunshots. Also, she had her own plasmids, all of which were rare or unique, which gave her something of an advantage. She could handle herself, so he didn't need to panic right there and then.

He stood right at the spot where he had left her and forced himself to calm down so he could think. He picked up her radio and stuck it on his belt next to his own, considering what it meant.

From what he had seen and heard, a picture was beginning to form in his head of what happened next. She had ditched her radio after he left, probably thinking that if she didn't have Jack's goodwill, she wouldn't have Tenenbaum's either.

The only bloodstains he could see apparently belonged to Comstock's body. A quick search of the man's clothes and pockets revealed that he had been picked clean, possibly by Elizabeth, but more likely by other scavengers. Good news, Elizabeth was probably still alive.

He hadn't seen her on his way back, nor had he heard her answer when he called out for her. Therefore, she hadn't gone back the way they had come, nor had she left for the Book or Appliances store. She had left, but hadn't gone back at all, therefore she had most likely continued onwards, but where? He could see the exit that would lead to the Appliances store from here, and it was blocked off, so she couldn't have gone there.

She had been leading him to the Toy store, therefore it had to be a part of the journey to the answers he had sought from her. Maybe there was another exit he didn't know about, that she had continued through? Definitely worth a look.

There was wreckage in the way of the stairs that led to the lower level. Glancing down over the railing and seeing the drop, Jack opted to clamber over the wreckage.

Had someone been observing him, they would have been laughing their socks off. Jack's suit was great for protection, but absolutely terrible for climbing on things. At first, he couldn't get any traction to pull himself up, leaving him wiggling a few inches off the ground. He almost slipped off twice, catching himself so he wouldn't land on his weapons.

Finally, he gained the purchase he needed to pull himself up. Standing up on the wreckage, he peered down only to realize that there wasn't much of a floor behind the fallen stand before the stairs began. Jack groaned when he realized what he had to do to prevent a fall down the stairs.

Getting off the wreckage was essentially the same thing as getting on, except in reverse. He held on desperately, fighting against gravity to ensure he didn't tumble down the stairs and break his weapons and probably a few bones. He barely managed it, lowering himself down on the small landing, one foot slipping off onto the first step.

With nothing major to get in his way now, Jack was free to survey the rest of the Toy store. Whatever had hit it, it had hit hard. Burn marks from both fire and electricity along with bullet holes dotted the environs. Free-standing displays had been knocked over, scattering whatever toys had been on their shelves. The decorations of oversized toys and mushrooms had scrapes at the least; at the most, they were outright destroyed.

As he mounted a flight of stairs going up, Jack paused by a row of bullet holes in the wall. He traced a finger along it, noting the spacing between the holes and the size of the holes themselves. He frowned as he wondered what kind of weapon fired that caliber bullet at such a high rate.

So far, he hadn't seen anything in Rapture with those capabilities. Maybe Fontaine had some military-grade weapons smuggled down here, and they had been lost or rendered useless by ammo shortage before he had arrived? Maybe Ryan had once again played the hypocrite and brought some serious firepower down to Rapture in the beginning days of the war? Whatever it was or however it had been brought down here, he hoped he didn't see anything like it for the duration of his stay.

As he came up on the mid-level of the store, Jack noticed something towards the back. A disc of wood and some other material, maybe plastic or metal, laying up against the wall. On either side were two piles of curved wooden slats. Perhaps it was the remnants of a completely destroyed mushroom decoration, and the disc was the flattened cap seen from the underside?

As Jack approached the disc, a faint sound reached his ears. It was a whirring, grinding noise, like some kind of machine toiling away on the other side of the wall. He realized that the sound was steadily growing louder as he neared the disc, just before he noticed the hole in the wall next to it. It would be just big enough for him to walk through without snagging his suit on the rebar poking out of the wall. Considering that Elizabeth had likely come this way, and that the whirring, grinding noise was coming from it, he was going through it.

The light was so bad and Jack was so focused on not damaging his suit on the rebar that he didn't notice the corpse until he had gotten through. The woman's body (judging from the clothes, it was a woman) was impaled through the chest by a short length of rebar. Judging by her position in relation to the hole, something very strong had likely hit her very hard right into a weak point in the wall, making the hole and forcing the rebar right through her chest.

Jack couldn't help but grimace and hope that she hadn't lived long enough to feel the bar of metal penetrating her chest. He shook his head and got to work, going through the woman's pockets. Annoyed that she hadn't been carrying anything or that someone else had gotten to the loot before him, he got up and prepared to continue on, only to notice something.

The pinkie of her right hand ended in a thimble of all things. Judging from how the finger was still shorter than the rest, the thimble was likely to hide the stump of a shortened finger. For some reason, this drew his attention.

His focus was broken by a metallic screech as the machine finally stopped its whirring and grinding. He tore his gaze from the corpse to see the source, a service elevator. He glanced back at the body before walking over to the elevator and getting in. He grasped the control stick and cranked it back once. He released it and turned back to watch the hole and the light shining through it disappear as the elevator began to descend.

As pipes and turbine fans passed by, Jack checked his weapons, both to keep his mind from the swirling maelstrom of thoughts and speculations that threatened to give him a headache, and to ready himself should the elevator's arrival be some kind of a trap. Ever since Elizabeth had come into his life, she had thrown everything into confusion, almost as much as Atlas' betrayal and those three audio diaries of Suchong's from Rapture Central Control had.

Why was this girl affecting him the way she did and what was it that allowed her to? First he literally dreams of her before he even learns of her existence. Then he resurrects her because she saved one Little Sister even after helping Atlas and his army to escape their prison. Then he leaves her because she originally used that Little Sister as bait in some complex revenge plan. And now he was running after her, both to ensure that she was safe and that his own integrity was maintained.

When the elevator finally stopped, there was no ambush, just a store and locker room. Jack found a few brass tubes and some screws in a toolbox and put them in his bag for when he came across a U-Invent. Unfortunately, there was only one obvious way out of the room, with the exception of an exceptionally large opening to the vent system.

Jack knelt down and studied the opening. A woman of Elizabeth's size would easily fit through. A man of his size and wearing a Big Daddy suit? That was going to be a bit more difficult.

Jack tossed his bag through the opening first, followed by his wrench and his firearms. With nothing to encumber him besides his suit, he mentally prepared himself for another round of "Jack Embarasses Himself". Sticking his arms through first, he pulled himself through until he couldn't anymore. With just pushing through no longer working, Jack began to wriggle through as best as he could.

He had both arms through and pushing against the sides of the opening he wiggled the suit through. His range of sideways movement was very limited in the suit even when he was upright and not stuck halfway through a damn hatch. Jack once again thanked his lucky stars that no one was watching or recording this newest humiliation.

As soon as his rear got through the opening, he was good to go. Crouching over as far as he could, Jack grabbed his bag, wrench, and guns before continuing on. Glass crunched under his feet as he walked by a vent, air caressing his face lightly for a moment before he passed on.

His thighs and calves were beginning to burn from crouching in the suit when he stepped in the puddle of water just in front of another large vent.

"Who's there?!" a voice demanded from the other side of the vent. "Ya can't have any of it, it's mine, ya hear?!

Jack could make out the silhouette of the splicer in the gloom beyond, a shotgun in his arm and trained on the vent. He raised his hand and fired an Electro-Bolt between the horizontal vent openings, striking the splicer dead-center. As the splicer screamed and electricity arced off his skin, Jack glanced down at the water and hurried on, thanking God that his heavy boot and Electric Flesh tonic had protected him from his own power.

The vent system terminated about ten yards or so further on. Jack peered out and into a long, carpeted room, sighing as he realized what he was about to do. He carefully dropped his bag and weapons out onto the floor before wiggling through the opening, rear-end first this time.

When he finally popped through, he just barely managed to grab onto the sides, saving himself the humility of landing on his ass. Grunting, he lowered himself to the ground without stepping on his weapons, but not without making a racket when he did land. He gathered up his equipment and continued on, hoping that if his racket attracted splicers, none of them would be on the level of a Frosty.

The darkened room (which was clear of any furniture and essentially resembled a wide hallway for some reason) ended with a doorway. Jack pushed his way through the doors to find a curious sight.

Across the room from him was some kind of mural, the only light in the room playing across it. It depicted a smug-looking lion, standing on its hind legs, holding back a large rat with one arm. The lion was wearing a tie and smoking a cigarette, a familiar moustache on its upper lip. The rat was carrying a Bible and the US and Soviet flags in its own arms. Over the rat were the words Ryan the Lion reminds you, with the rest of the message continuing beneath them, Parasites are NEVER welcome.

"Ryan the Lion?" Jack said, raising an eyebrow. "Really dad?"

Then again, he had compared himself to a lion not too long ago, but he actually lived up to the hype. Lions were the top predators of the savannah; he was the top predator of Rapture. If he was a lion, Ryan had been a European hunter with a plethora of African natives doing the actual hunting and fighting for him. And look how that had ended for him.

Despite the obvious run-down and abandoned state of the place, it looked to be one of the more cheerful places in Rapture. That didn't keep it from being infected with Andrew Ryan's particular brand of fanaticism, however.

Facing the mural was a chalkboard and a row of child-sized easels. The chalkboard read: Today's Art Lesson: Draw a Parasite You met Today! The easels each showed a childish caricature of a woman. From right to left they read MOMMY, DADDY'S GIRLFRIEND, and MRS. TURNER. Jack smiled and snorted as he wondered if Mrs. Turner had been the teacher.

Wait a moment. Art lesson, teacher? For crying out loud, he was in a school. The absurdity of it passed in a moment. After all, there had to be schools; the next generation had to be educated and all. But like everything untouched by Atlas' direct influence, it was instead drowned by Ryan's corruption. The mural and the drawings suddenly lost their cheerfulness, replaced instead by the chill of realization.

Jack straightened up and walked to the back of the room. The school's physical curriculum consisted of a small basketball court. Glancing around among the rolled-up matts showed no signs of life. Another mural showed Ryan the Lion holding up a tennis racket, jumping over a hurdle, and holding a trophy. In between the hurdle and trophy pictures was another message: It doesn't matter how you PLAY it matters how you WIN! - Ryan the Lion.

"That explains a lot," Jack muttered. Spying the lone basketball on the floor, Jack summoned it with his telekinesis and then threw it at the far goal. The ball slammed right into the middle of the board's red square, bouncing off and falling to the ground, missing the basket entirely. The temptation to try again until he got the ball into the basket came up, but he had better things to do.

Exiting the basketball court, Jack headed for the next set of double doors. Opening the doors revealed another display to him. Three pictures of that smug, stupid lion were positioned under a sign: LIONS OF THE WEEK. Each lion bore a name: Michael Ramsey, Cory Stoehr, and Oliver Hong. Oliver's lion was about to fall off the wall.

Jack wondered what had become of Michael, Cory, and Oliver, especially of Cory. Then again, Cory didn't sound exactly like a girl's name, nor did it sound like it was completely a boy's name. He didn't know whether to hope if Cory had been a boy or a girl. Either way, being a child in Rapture was possibly one of the worst things he could imagine.

Jack explored the new, bigger room, more and more of Rapture's educational system coming to light. It appeared to be a private school, essentially a business whose purpose was to educate children whose parents paid for the service. Given Rapture's extreme capitalist system, it made sense that schooling would be privatized.

What did the people who couldn't afford it do though? Teach their kids themselves? Depending on how well off someone was or how much free time they had, that might not work. And judging from how hard it had been for most of Rapture's populace to simply live, Atlas had likely used this potential divide as yet another example of Rapture's shortcomings under Ryan. Surprising though that this place was in such good shape as it was, despite the obvious neglect and decay.

Down one hall, he found two chalkboards, a chair between them with a book and a teddy bear resting on it. The chalkboards each presented a word that Ryan Andrew hated: Communism and Empathy. Underneath each was a describing word or phrase for the board's title, each written by a child's hand. Jack found part of himself agreeing with the short and succinct description of Communism, but when he turned his attention to the Empathy board, his lip curled in disgust.

Empathy - FOR WEaK PEOple. - IS FOR THE UNFIT. - NOT a VALUe. - Drags you down. - is for parisites. - Is Stupid. - NOT Positive. - not a Virtue. That kind of thinking would have let him harvest the Little Sisters. What kind of monsters would this school have produced if this had been allowed to continue? If the war-

Jack froze as he realized what he was thinking and gave his head a good shake. That particular "what if" wasn't something he wanted to consider right now.

He glanced back at the other board. Communism - IS a SHAM. - Outdated. - IS A MISTEAK. - No Good. - Delusion. - HIPPOCRIT. - a lie to PEOPLE. - invented by Parasites. - PROPERTY THEFT. - A STUPID IDEA. - is stealing. - moochers.

Prior to Rapture, Jack had considered himself an American patriot. He still was, but everything had changed. Despite what his passport said and what his memories told him, he had been born in Rapture, conceived in an act of carnality and profitably, molded and altered by its technologies and scientists, all to be the property, tool, and slave of a man without scruples or morals. He wasn't sure where his false memories ended and his true memories began, how much of his life at the farm was fake and what was real, and how much of America and its Dream he had truly experienced.

If extreme love of the capitalist system had wrought this, then what did that mean for America? There were laws to prevent the abuses that Rapture's system had created. If extreme love for something could cause this, what about extreme hatred? McCarthy's "Red Scare" had only been a few years ago, and while that had apparently been a fiasco, there was still plenty of anti-Communist sentiment.

Jack was by no means a communist sympathizer. He was no fan of Nikita Khrushchev or any of the Soviet leaders, but after seeing what capitalism could do at its worst, he couldn't help but wonder if there were any benefits to communism. After all, he had heard criticism of FDR's "New Deal", both back in the States and in Rapture, that it smacked of Marxist ideas and roots. The New Deal had evidently been the start of Andrew Ryan's disillusionment with America and the beginning of his dream for a country for men like him.

Shaking his head, Jack continued on. Just further on, there was a little shooting range. The targets were set up on cut-outs of the parasitic rat. Ryan the Lion was above him on the wall, holding a crossbow in one hand - paw - and some bolts in the other. Ryan -the- Lion Always shoots to KILL. Jack supposed that was sound advice, just now something he'd tell a young child.

The center of the area was a room that was obviously for viewing projector shows. The floor was dominated by a large, soft rug adorned with Ryan the Lion's smug face. On one side of the room was a projector, the screen on the other side. Judging from what he had seen so far, the shows were likely more Ryanist propaganda than anything with real educational value. Jack considered checking the projector's reel, but decided against it. He was getting tired of Ryan's omnipresent propaganda, plus he had Elizabeth to find.

On the wall to the right of the next set of double doors was a rack and another sign. The rack was empty and the sign read: FOR THE PACIFICATION OF DISRUPTIVE CHILDREN. Jack studied the size of the rack and wondered what each one had formerly held. He doubted that they had originally stored firearms; not even a school dedicated to Ryan's ideals would go that far.

The next room was apparently the lunch room. Four tables with stools were arranged around a pedestal, which bore the slogan There's NO Free Lunch. On top of the pedestal was a statue of Ryan himself, holding the hand of a little boy and pointing off into the distance, towards the utopia he had imagined Rapture was or would become.

The wall on his right held a row of four posters, of the "Heroes of Rapture". Well, almost. Someone had defaced Tenenbaum's poster by painting the word "Traitors" over "Heroes" and the word "Bitch" over her face. Jack made a face at that before glancing at the others.

The furthest one to the right was pretty much destroyed; he had to take a close look at it before deciding that it was Suchong's, evidenced by the warped Asian features and glasses. The other two were Ryan and Cohen's. Jack made another face before smirking at them and snapping his fingers. Ryan, Cohen, and the remnants of Suchong's faces went up in flames.

One had to appreciate the small things in life.

He was surprised to find that the prices for the food weren't as high as he would have imagined. A quarter for a hot dog or hamburger, fifteen cents for a sandwich or french fries, and five cents for juice or water. This was probably before the war though.

Jack was annoyed to find that all the food from both the dining room and the kitchen had been cleaned out by scavengers, just like everywhere else in this particular part of Rapture. At least the stoves and refrigerators in the kitchen netted him plenty of invention components.

The kitchen's back door led him to some lockers and crates before going up a flight of stairs to where the school's faculty must have worked. The desk's drawers had been opened and rifled through, empty of anything that would have been useful.

In the Principal's Office, Jack found more of the same. Along one wall was a desk with a bunch of fancy bottles labeled "Possession" and a chalkboard. The top of the chalkboard read Proper Discipline. Underneath the header was Official Procedure: - FOR PROBLEM CHILDREN USE OF POSSESSION IS ADVISED. In between the desk and the board was a chair with a cane and length of rope. Jack couldn't help but wince at what it all entailed.

Jack couldn't help but wonder if the principal had become something like the Frosty splicer, but with Possession instead of Old Man Winter. He didn't want to know what that looked like or if the guy was still around, haunting his old school like some kind of mind-controlling, fleshy ghost. That would be a nightmare and a half to fight.

Jack hopped over the front desk and into the lobby, figuring that the doors just led out into a hall connecting the cafeteria with the faculty area and the lobby. Yet another mural of Ryan the Lion and the rat was on the wall ahead of him next to the exit. The heading read Makers & Takers. This week's MAKER was Saoirse Farley was printed underneath Ryan the Lion while Jimmy Ward was This week's TAKER under the rat.

Jack made a face as he imagined a system calling out a child for not taking to its propaganda, making them a target for their peers and possibly their parents. Approaching the exit, Jack glanced to his left at a large advertising poster.

A man in a suit and a woman in a black dress stood by their children (a boy in a white and a girl in a pink dress who shared their father and mother's hair colors, respectively). PARENTS! The poster urged, ENSURE your child becomes a MODEL CITIZEN WITH RYAN THE LION PREPARATORY ACADEMY. All of them wore vapid smiles on their faces, like this travesty of a school would actually make the boy and girl model citizens, not the type of people who would destroy lives and innocence in the name of their own self-interest and advancement.

This time, Jack allowed his mind to consider that question: What would have become of Rapture if Elizabeth hadn't released Atlas and his army back into the city? From the lyrics of "Rise, Rapture, Rise!", Ryan intended for Rapture to one day rise from the ocean depths following the aftermath of a nuclear World War III between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. With Ryan's values and this "education" system, Jack could see what kind of society would rise up to rebuild human civilization.

Even if America and the Soviet Union did destroy each other and Rapture had been humanity's best shot at preserving civilization, a country of self-serving opportunists and near-sociopaths was not what he wanted to see take over the world. And that was even assuming that Rapture's society wouldn't crumble by itself over time instead of the short quick death that Elizabeth had made possible.

And there was something else to consider: Himself.

If Elizabeth hadn't gotten the activation phrase for Fontaine, yes, he never would have learned about Rapture or any of this nightmare he had been in since waking up underwater with debris from the plane sinking all around him. He'd still be in Kansas, "sleepwalking through life", as Ryan had put it.

And what of his "parents"? His real ones were both down here in Rapture, and they were dead. The man and the woman who he had lived with for two years, what would they have done if Fontaine hadn't called him back home? Would he have woken up one day to find that they had flown the coop, left him on his own rather than be his caretaker for the rest of their lives? Or would he have walked into the kitchen one morning to a breakfast of poisoned eggs and coffee, or gone hunting with "Pop" only to get a bullet in the back of his head?

Jack sighed heavily as he turned back to the doors and prepared to push through. He had one hell of an apology to prepare for Elizabeth.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9: Of Adult Stores and Flying Cities

The first thing that Jack saw as the doors parted in front of him was a familiar and despicable name: Dr. Suchong. A huge advertisement, like a billboard, dominated the space ahead of him, proclaiming that THE SILVER FIN RESTAURANT had been CLOSED BY ORDER OF DR. SUCHONG.

Jack made a face at Suchong's name. What the heck had that man been doing with a restaurant of all things? The clinic and the secret lab, that was definitely Dr. Suchong's thing. How would a restaurant aid him in his "dastardly deeds"?

Behind and to the right of the advertisement was another of those airlocks, only this one was broken and wide open, the sign over it reading "Elevator". To the left was a store with an obnoxious neon-pink sign, "Cupid's Arrow". The sign featured Cupid and his bow and arrow alternating between two poses.

Jack glanced between the two options, then opted for Cupid's Arrow. As unlikely as it was that she was in there, as long as he thought that Elizabeth had come this way, it was best not to leave any stone unturned.

Approaching the store, Jack could see the posters on either side of the door. The one on the right depicted a big blond man who was missing his shirt, holding a diving helmet with one arm and a drill over his shoulders. "Rapture's Man of Steel - Big Daddy" the sign read, "He works hard...but plays HARDER."

Jack made a face. He doubted that the Big Daddies looked anything like that under their suits. Maybe in the beginning before their skin and organs had been grafted directly onto the suit's interior, but definitely not now. Now there was a question that he didn't want answered.

A girl in a loose-fitting scarlet robe sat next to a pile of food. Appetite for Sin! the poster proclaimed. See…"the temptations of Rapture" through the eyes of a Midwest girl!

Oh good night! It was a freaking adult store. The odds of Elizabeth being in there just appeared to have decreased even further. Still, those odds weren't zero and he was closer to the store's door than he was to the airlock. Already feeling his face flushing red, Jack cleared his throat and then walked forward.

Just like the airlock, Cupid's Arrow's door was broken and wide open. Jack looked around and could confirm that Cupid's Arrow was indeed an adult store. Another poster hung on the wall to the right: Gender-Bender. Another Appetite for Sin! poster graced the wall behind the counter, which had the titles The Farmer's Daughter, Below Decks, Mother May I?, Co-Eds, and Pearly Gates displayed on the front. The blood continued to rush into Jack's cheeks and now his ears. Yup, definitely an adult store.

And it was right next door to a school. Only in Rapture, of course.

"Elizabeth?" Jack called out, listening for an answer. There was none; then again, their last meeting hadn't ended well, what with him grabbing her by the shoulders and shouting. He wouldn't want to answer if he was in her shoes. Damn, he needed to think up one really good apology.

Shaking his head, Jack sped-walked past the counter and into the store. On the shelves of the two stands, there were more of the titles he had already seen, along with some new ones. For once, the merchandise was worse off than the store itself. Even after the valuables had been looted, it was obvious that splicers had seen fit to keep coming back for an "eyeful" at the salacious images that Cupid's Arrow had specialized in.

In the middle of the floor, a dead splicer lay. There was a stab wound in his back, his pants were down around his ankles, and his buttocks were exposed for all the world to see. He was surrounded by open and wrinkled copies of explicit books and magazines, along with a multitude of used tissues which Jack took care to avoid touching. Now that there was inspiration for a cautionary tale: Don't be jerkin' the gherkin in a city full of spliced maniacs.

At the back of the store were two sets of double doors with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign over both of them. In between them were three doorless openings. Jack peered into the middle one to find some kind of viewing room. An oval window looked out onto some kind of stage, which was occupied by a stripper's pole and a green cardboard cutout of a man winking while holding a finger to his lips and a martini glass.

The wall behind the stage was dominated by a large advertisement. TURN EVERY ROOM INTO...A PEEPSHOW! The vision of the leering guy was dominated by a yellow, hourglass-shaped silhouette and the words PEEPING TOM. So Ryan's company had made a plasmid that allowed one to both turn invisible and to see through walls.

There really was no depth that his father wouldn't fall to, was there? Well, at least Elizabeth had found a good usage for it. Was there any chance that this was the same striptease joint where she had found the plasmid in the first place?

Jack backed out of the room and headed towards the employee's doors. Passing through them, Jack glanced into the staging room and continued past it as there wasn't anything to scrounge up.

The back of the store served as a changing room for the strippers, apparently. The entire back wall consisted of a long mirror with a counter and chairs for applying makeup and other accessories. A garbage can was overflowing with what looked like gift boxes, and one section of the counter was dominated by several vases filled with dead flowers. Old gifts for a popular girl?

What really caught Jack's eye was the wire-frame mannequin right by the flower vases. Walking up to it, Jack confirmed his suspicion. The clothes were Elizabeth's, her blouse and her skirt. If these were right here, then what was she wearing? The good news was that he was on the right track, and that she still had his weapons with her.

Jack turned and ran for the exit. Elizabeth had been through here, and not too long ago. If he hurried, he could catch up with her before she ran into serious trouble.

As Jack ran out the formerly automatic door, he suddenly put on the brakes, just barely coming to a stop in time. The red-headed twins who had appeared and disappeared without warning in Suchong's secret lab stood in front of him, as unfazed as though they just hadn't almost been bowled over by a big guy hauling ass in a diving suit.

He swore as he caught his breath from the sudden run and equally sudden stop. "Would you not do that!?" he gasped at the two of them.

The Lutece Twins simultaneously raised an eyebrow at him, still completely nonplussed.

"Thoroughness can be a virtue, Mr. Wynand," the man, Robert, if he remembered correctly, said.

"Except in cases where speed is of the essence, Mr. Ryan," the woman, Rosalind, continued.

Jack would have winced at the application of both surnames, if he hadn't been practicing the very approach that Rosalind had just advised. Annoyance bloomed in his chest as he finally caught his breath. Did these two seriously have nothing better to do than to bother and delay him?

"But unless one knows where one has to go, speed isn't of much worth," Robert countered.

"A fair point, unless one is moving fast enough, then time and distance aren't of too much concern," Rosalind pointed out.

"First, either call me Jack or Mr. Wynand, please," Jack interrupted. "Second, would you please move? I need to find Elizabeth."

"Oh really?" Robert said, raising his other eyebrow. "Didn't you leave her to fend for herself?"

"Understandable," Rosalind observed, "given how she used a Little Sister for her own devices, unleashed Fontaine back upon Rapture, and then gave him the trigger phrase."

Jack grit his teeth before forcing himself to calm down. Punching these twins would likely be every bit as futile as shooting them.

"I-I don't know the whole story," he said, shame creeping into his voice. "And I shouldn't condemn her when I've practically forgiven Tenenbaum for her sins."

Rosalind raised her other eyebrow now, before she and her counterpart exchanged looks. Some kind of communication passed between them before they both turned back to him.

"The woman will be wanting this back." Robert took something out from one of his pockets and flipped it towards Jack.

Jack caught it without having to use his telekinesis. He thought it was some kind of large and unusually thick coin until he opened his hand to see it. It was a pendant, blue with a silver rim and bird symbol. When it buzzed in his hand, he almost dropped it. Before his eyes, static covered the pendant like a television without a signal. When the static subsided, the bird symbol was replaced with an empty bird cage.

"This should help in locating her." Jack looked up to find Rosalind holding an open pamphlet to him.

He took it and looked over the pages. It was evidently an advertisement for "Bathyspheres Deluxe", another one of Frank Fontaine's businesses down here. The pamphlet was currently open to a map of the store.

"Use your head, but quickly," Robert advised.

"Unless you wish to haul her carcass all the way back to Suchong's lab," Rosalind added as the lights overhead began flickering.

"Wait, how will this-" Jack looked back up only to find himself alone. "Ok, that's...annoying."

He stuffed the strange pendant into his bag and turned his attention back to the pamphlet. The entrance to Bathyspheres Deluxe was on the floor above, accessible via the elevator just through the open airlock up ahead. The main area was a showroom for the bathyspheres. Branching off from that was a test-drive for prospective customers, a service bay for the spheres, an information kiosk, a lounge, and a restaurant.

Wait a moment, the Silver Fin Restaurant? Wasn't that the restaurant that Suchong had closed down?

Jack ran back up the stairs to confirm that yes, that was the restaurant that Suchong had ordered closed. And hadn't Elizabeth been Suchong's "lab assistant"? Bit of a leap of logic, but it was the only real lead that he had.

Jack rushed around the advertisement, up another short set of stairs, into the airlock, through the set of double doors, through the open area beyond, almost into a splicer, and into the elevator. Coming to another halt in the elevator, Jack hurriedly smacked the button before the splicer could join him. He couldn't help but smirk as the splicer yelled in rage as the doors closed shut and the elevator began to ascend.

As his breathing calmed down, Jack took another look at the map. The Silver Fin Restaurant was to the right and up a flight of stairs from the entrance. Hopefully, there would be no other surprises on the way to the Silver Fin. And just to be on the safe side should the splicer he had almost run into hold a grudge, Jack placed a proximity mine in the middle of the elevator's floor.

When the elevator door opened, Jack found himself looking upon the Bathysphere Deluxe. It had definitely seen better days. The neon sign had been trashed, one of the display windows had been blown up, pieces of its mannequins all over the place, while the other was riddled with bullet holes, its mannequins looking like swiss cheese. Off to the side was a bunch of smashed crates and wooden boxes, a destroyed guitar the most noticeable of the debris.

Jack took off on his third dead run of the day. He leapt over the set of steps out front (what was with Fontaine and little flights of stairs everywhere in his Department Store?) and continued on to the front doors. He burst through them, leaping over a set of descending stairs, slid, took a hard right that almost brought him down, and ran for the first true staircase he had seen all day.

Sure enough, at the top of the stairs, there was the Silver Fin Restaurant. He had to take another hard right and another stop as he waited for the automatic door to open. As soon as it had come up, he was through the entrance.

As he entered the reception area, the roar of a Big Daddy echoed through the restaurant. Remembering the Luteces' parting words, Jack put on an extra bout of speed, hurtling up yet another set of stairs. He almost screamed with frustration as he came to yet another stop in front of another airlock. He just about broke the lever when he flipped it. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long for the airlock to cycle.

A Big Daddy stood in the middle of the room, all eight portholes glowing a baleful crimson as its drill spun and it shuffled around the room. Jack almost opened up with Electro-Bolt before he realized that he wasn't the target of the beast's wrath; something or someone else had angered it. Three guesses on who that was?

"Elizabeth!?" he called out over the threatening drone of the Big Daddy. "Are ya there?"

For a moment, nothing stirred other than the Big Daddy. Then Jack saw her, peering out from behind some kind of counter towards the back. Even from where he stood and with the poor lighting, he could see the terror in her face. Right, from her point of view, a Big Daddy was still an apex predator in Rapture's jungle. Luckily for both of them, he was an apex predator too.

Jack took out his chemical thrower and wrangled a canister of electric gel from his bag. He forced his hands to be steady as he took the napalm canister off of the thrower and connected the electric gel canister. Even though he could bring Elizabeth back should she be killed, he didn't want to see that happen, and he doubted that she wanted to experience death a second time.

Speaking of Elizabeth, he'd better make sure that she would be getting out of this in good shape. Fishing out a med kit and an EVE hypo, Jack smiled as he formulated a plan. Zap the Daddy with Electro-Bolt, toss Elizabeth the kit and the hypo while the Daddy was convulsing, and then finish him off with the thrower. Quick and easy.

Smiling, Jack turned and fired off his Electro-Bolt at the Daddy. The drone gave way to a convulsing groan as the Daddy twitched and arcs shot over its suit.

"Elizabeth, catch!" Jack yelled as he threw the kit and hypo towards her. Despite the surprise evident in her eyes, Elizabeth managed to catch both of them.

"Jack, look out!" she cried, pointing back towards the Big Daddy.

Jack turned, raising the thrower to finish off the brute, only to find that it had already recovered from the Electro-Bolt and its red gaze was fixed solely on him. Before he could pull the thrower's trigger, the Daddy thrust its drill arm at him, and the drill was launched. Right. At. Him.

Jack threw himself to the side; the drill grazed him, knocking the thrower from his hands and taking a chunk out of his suit. Jack crashed to the ground and looked up in time to see the Daddy retrieve its drill thanks to a long cable and turn its gaze back on him.

He remembered back in Suchong's lab, the chalkboard that described the removal of the launching option for the drill in future Bouncer models. Jack grit his teeth as the realization set in. Looked like this one didn't get the memo; time to put him out to pasture.

The Bouncer prepared to charge, prompting Jack to roll out of the way. The Bouncer shot right by him, colliding with the wall instead. Jack snapped his fingers at the suited brute, engulfing it in flames and buying him enough time to get up.

Reaching back for his weapons, Jack's eyes widened as he found that they weren't there. Looking at the ground, he found them quickly, right where they had fallen after his "maneuvers". Before he could grab them, physically or telekinetically, the Bouncer, flames still licking at its suit, came out at him, drill swinging.

Jack turned and ran for the counter dividing the restaurant between the dining area and the kitchen. He vaulted over it, smirking as he heard the Daddy roar in frustration. The Big Daddies were big, strong, and tough, but they lacked a lot in agility.

Jack got back up to his feet and glared at the Bouncer from over the counter. It responded by slamming its drill into the ground and revving it hard. Jack's vision blurred and his ability to move decreased as the vibrations rattled his brain around in his skull. That was honestly his least favorite thing about Bouncers.

When the Bouncer ceased shaking his head like a maraca, instead of attempting to hit him over the counter, it turned and went straight for the doors between the dining area and kitchen. As it was coming through the doors, Jack was pulling himself back onto the counter. Attempting to hit him, it charged, slamming into the counter as his boots touched down on the other side.

Jack hit it with another Electro-Bolt, hoping to buy time to grab one of his weapons. This was going to be just like his first fight with a Bouncer in the Medical Pavilion, wasn't it? Him jumping back and forth over that insurance booth's counter to avoid the Big Daddy, shooting at it whenever he got the chance, hoping to avoid the same death as that idiot splicer in the theater.

"Jack!" Elizabeth called out. "Keep him distracted! I got an idea!"

Jack twisted around, trying to find Elizabeth before remembering that she was likely using her Peeping Tom plasmid. Now if only his Natural Camouflage tonic could work while he was moving.

With a roar, the Bouncer quit convulsing and headed once again for the doors. Jack reached telekinetically for his tommy gun, physically grabbing it out of the air, and beginning his climb back over the counter.

This old song-and-dance was repeated a couple times: Jack vaulting over the counter just before the Bouncer could reach him, hitting it with a plasmid or some bullets and then waiting for it to head for the doors before climbing over the counter again. Thankfully, nothing could be said for the Big Daddy's intelligence.

It was working, until the Big Daddy saw him climbing up and decided to shoot its drill at him. Jack's suit kept the drill from penetrating his flesh, but it allowed the Daddy to reel him in like a fish, only much faster. As soon as he was within range, the Bouncer reared back its fist and punched him so hard, his suit was torn off the drill and he was sent flying backwards.

Before the Big Daddy could continue wailing on him, an icy projectile struck it, freezing it in place. Jack glanced towards the origin of the Old Man Winter cast. Elizabeth was standing by the device.

When he had come in, Jack had of course noticed the strange device in the middle of the room. The Big Daddy had been of more concern, so he hadn't paid any attention at the time. Wires and cables ran from the corner of the room to its two pillars. Between them on the ground was some kind of dais, and over that, supported by the pillars was some kind of white oblong mass surrounded by a ring of cylindric nodules. The mass was glowing white, like it was about to overheat.

As he watched, Elizabeth turned towards the device and fired another round of Old Man Winter at the mass. The white glow gave way to icicles and frost.

"Jack, get out of sight," Elizabeth said as she approached the right pillar of the device. "If this works, we get rid of that damn Bouncer in one shot."

Before Jack could ask for an explanation, Elizabeth grabbed a lever on the machine and cranked it. With a sound like an electronic sink, something like wisps poured from two glowing white spheres into-into some kind of crack in the air between the dais and the mass. With a swish, reality itself distorted like a bubble around the crack before it expanded, becoming something like a hole in the air itself.

"Jack, move!" Elizabeth yelled. She positioned herself between the hole and the Big Daddy, shotgun aimed at the latter. "And pray that he charges!"

Jack did as he was told, once again vaulting over the counter and peering over it, praying to whoever was listening.

The moment that the Bouncer broke through its icy shell, sending fragments of dry ice flying everywhere, Elizabeth opened fire, peppering its suit with buckshot. The Bouncer turned towards her and went berserk. Roaring with rage, it dispensed with shooting its drill at her and prepared to charge.

As it began to lunge forward, Elizabeth disappeared from view. Too late to stop or change its course, the Bouncer shot forward and right into the hole. It let out one last bellow as it disappeared from view, soon fading out.

Elizabeth came back into view, crouched to the ground mere inches from the Bouncer's path. She was wearing a dark blue, old-timey dress with a white corset and a little blue jacket. A white choker around her neck displayed her Rapture Lighthouse pendant. While her other outfit gave the femme fatale look, Jack had to admit that he kind of liked this outfit more, even if it was old fashioned.

As she straightened up, Jack clambered one last time over the counter and ran towards her. Elizabeth had been looking at the hole as though she expected the Bouncer to come roaring back through, so she wasn't expecting him to run to her and embrace her.

He could feel her tense up in his arms, before she relaxed and embraced him back. When they finally stepped back, it took Jack a moment to formulate his words.

"Jack, what are you-" Elizabeth began.

"I'm sorry," he interrupted. "I shouldn't have yelled at you like that, and I definitely shouldn't have left you alone. I shouldn't have judged you when I didn't know the full story. That was wrong of me and I won't do it again. Can you forgive me for that?"

Elizabeth studied his face for a long moment. Jack began to wonder if she could forgive him, if she should, given that he had left her alone in one of the most dangerous cities on Earth. Just as he thought that she was going to walk away or give him a verbal lashing in return, she smiled.

"I forgive you, Jack," she answered, "and I don't blame you. What I did to Sally was beyond terrible, and then I set Atlas and his army loose on Rapture, and gave him the power to control you."

"Yes, you did," Jack replied, "but then you gave your own life to save her. As for Rapture, I saw that 'Ryan the Lion' school, and I honestly don't think that letting Rapture exist would have been good. And who knows what would have happened to me if Atlas hadn't summoned me back to Rapture. In any case, I'm glad that you're safe."

Elizabeth smiled up at him and they embraced again. Jack rested his chin on the top of Elizabeth's head and closed his eyes. Elizabeth's frame in his arms was reassuring in an odd way; despite being so small compared to him, it was like she was anchoring him, providing him with support in this crazy world.

When Jack opened his eyes, he found himself looking at the hole in the air. He could make out some vague shapes inside, only increasing his curiosity.

"Hey Elizabeth," he began, raising a hand to point at the hole. "What in the world is that?"

Elizabeth pulled out of the hug to see what he was talking about. "Oh, that," she said. "That's exactly what I was going to show you in the first place. It's called a Tear."

"Ok," Jack said as he approached it cautiously, "what's a Tear?" He squinted into the Tear, before his eyes widened in incredulity. "Are those...buildings in the clouds!?"

"Yes," Elizabeth answered, a sad note in her voice. "That, that is the flying city of Columbia, circa 1912. A city very similar to Rapture, and very different at the same time. It was meant to be a paradise, but it turned out to be a perdition."

"A city in the sky?" Jack snorted. "Ridiculous."

"That's exactly what my father said when he saw Rapture," Elizabeth said wryly.

Jack made a face. "Ok, good point there," he admitted. "But from what I know of history, there were no flying cities back in 1912."

"And in some worlds, there are no underwater cities in 1960," she countered.

Jack was about to open his mouth to argue when her words finally clicked in his head.

"Did you say...other worlds?" he asked, not sure that he had heard right.

Elizabeth looked at him before glancing around, a hand raised to her chin in thought. Suddenly, she started towards one of the counters. Stopping at the one she'd been hiding behind, she began gathering a bunch of papers and photographs together. Confused, Jack went to stand by her side and peer over her shoulder.

"Elizabeth?" he asked.

"One moment, Jack," Elizabeth said, focused as she searched for pen or pencil. "The science behind Tears is hard to explain. Some visual aids will probably prove helpful. Ah, here we are."

Picking up a pen, Elizabeth turned a sheet of paper over to its blank side. She drew a straight line lengthwise across the paper before turning to him and pointing at the line.

"Alright," she hesitantly began, "let's say that this line represents history, all that has ever happened and that we know to be true. Now," she pointed at the very end of the line, "this is where you are, at the very point where the future becomes the present for an instant before becoming the past.

"You come to a point where you have to make a decision. It can be something small like having tea or coffee, or something huge that changes the course of your life. You consider your choices, and then choose one."

Elizabeth drew another line from the end of the first, continuing it at a forty-five degree angle.

"You continue on, your choice becoming part of what it is, along with its results and consequences. However, that's only one side of the coin."

Elizabeth sighed. "And here's where we enter the realm of disbelief. Whenever a choice is made, another world comes into existence, where you made the opposite choice."

Elizabeth drew another forty-five degree line, opposite to the second one. The line now looked like a capital Y with a very long tale.

"For this other world, that choice is what you chose and what is real, and that version of you has to live with that choice and its consequences.

"This means that for every choice ever made, there is a world where the opposite decision was made. This means that," Elizabeth continued as she began drawing more lines coming off the main one, "there's a world where Truman didn't drop the atomic weapons, where Prohibition wasn't repealed, where the Lusitania wasn't sunk, where Lincoln wasn't assassinated, where the American Revolution failed."

She stopped and pointed back at the Tear. "And where a flying city exists in the year 1912."

Jack nodded. On the inside, his brain was rebelling against what Elizabeth was telling him. How could this be? The world was how it was, how could an alternate exist? With all the choices that one person made in their lifetime, there would be more worlds than could be counted, and that was just counting one single person. How could so many worlds exist alongside each other at the same time? Then again, that Tear was basically supporting what Elizabeth was telling him.

"Ok," he responded, "and how exactly do the Tears fit into all this?"

"Tears are essentially rips in dimensional time and space," Elizabeth explained, drawing a curving line connecting a branching line with the main one. "They connect two different points in time and space, forming a door between different worlds. In this case," she pointed back to the Tear, "between 1960 Rapture and 1912 Columbia."

"Alright, I think I understand," Jack said. "One question left: How do you know all this and how do you fit in?"

"That's technically two questions?" Elizabeth said, and then smiled sadly. "But the answer fits both."

Putting down the paper and pen down and picking the photos up, Elizabeth sat down, patting the ground beside her. Jack looked around, and then sat down next to her, positioned so that he could keep an eye on the airlock door. Once they were settled, Elizabeth began telling her story.

She told how a young man by the name of Booker DeWitt, torn apart by the atrocities he committed in the Battle of Wounded Knee, came to a choice: A baptism. Deciding that what he had done couldn't be washed away, he rejected the baptism and continued on his way.

Booker DeWitt married a woman named Annabelle Watson, who would die giving birth to her daughter, Anna. Stuck with the infamy of being a former Pinkerton who was fired for being too violent, a gambling debt to the wrong crowd, and an infant daughter, Booker was given another choice by a man in a suit: Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.

After Booker regretted his original decision, he tried to get his daughter back, only for her and her captors to disappear through a hole in the air, leaving nothing behind but her pinky, severed by the closing of the hole. For nearly twenty years, Booker lived in squalor with his regret. In 1912, the man reappeared with a woman at his side, offering a chance to redeem himself. With nothing to lose, Booker accepted their offer.

Going through the Tear, Booker forgot that Anna had survived her birth, believing that the phrase "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" meant that he had to retrieve Elizabeth from Columbia and bring her to the Luteces in New York to be rid of his debt.

Elizabeth recounted how Booker had freed her from her prison at Columbia's Monument Island, evading her protector and warden, the "Songbird". Together, they had traversed not one, not two, but three different versions of Columbia, witnessing first the radical nationalism, religious fanaticism, and racial hierarchy of the "Founders" and their leader, "Zachery Hale Comstock", and then the rage, hate, and violence of the "Daisy Fitzroy" and her "Vox Populi". How to save the son of Jeremiah Fink, robber baron extraordinaire, she had stabbed Fitzroy in the back with a pair of scissors. How they had faced off against some inter-dimensional fusion of different versions of Lady Comstock, Elizabeth's supposed mother, a ghost-like entity who could somehow raise the dead. How she had allowed Songbird to capture her again to save Booker's life. How after six months of torture, Booker finally came to save her, bringing with him a message from a future version of her, from a world where Columbia was out to destroy the world and then all the worlds.

Together, they had stormed the Comstock's flagship, the "Hand of the Prophet", killing him before taking control of the Songbird and using him to fight off the Vox Populi as they went to destroy the siphon hidden away in Monument Island, finally unshackling Elizabeth and allowing her to fully experience and utilize her powers. She had then teleported herself, Booker, and Songbird to 1960 Rapture, drowning Songbird in the crushing ocean depths and then taking Booker to the "Sea of Doors", the world behind the worlds.

There, she had learned the truth about herself and Booker DeWitt and Zachery Comstock: They were the same person. Booker, her father, had refused the baptism. Comstock, all of the Comstocks, were a result of Booker DeWitt taking the opposite choice, accepting the baptism and seeing himself as resolved of both his guilt and his responsibility for his actions.

Sterilized by constant use of the Lutece Device for his facade of prophecy, Comstock opted to find a version of himself that had offspring and obtain theirs. Booker had sold Anna, and Comstock had rechristened her "Elizabeth". Thanks to the accident with the Tear, Elizabeth developed abilities typical to sentient "quantum superpositions": Able to create Tears at will and to know anything that she desired, the closest thing to omniscience that a human being could get.

What she learned first was this: Booker DeWitt was far from a good man; Zachery Comstock was much, much worse. There was only one way to prevent his existence, to protect all of reality from his bloody and monstrous legacy, and that was to smother him in his cradle. For Comstock, that was the baptism. In the Sea of Doors, Booker had stood in for Comstock on the day of the baptism, and Elizabeth and several other versions of her had drowned him there, erasing him and Columbia from the multiverse.

Immediately afterwards, every possible version of Elizabeth had converged, the Prime Elizabeths, the ones who had actually succeeded in erasing Comstock, becoming the "dominant" personality and memory of the new, single Elizabeth.

From there, Elizabeth learned of a subset of universes where her assimilation into Comstock's universe had gone horrifying wrong, resulting in her death by decapitation. She had attempted to prevent that, only to fail miserably. Those Comstocks, beset by guilt once more, left for other worlds, ones where Anna had or never would exist. One by one, Elizabeth had hunted down these fugitive Comstocks, ending with the one that had come to Rapture.

Discovering that the final Comstock had readopted the name and identity of Booker DeWitt and forgotten his time as Comstock, Elizabeth had begun looking for ways to remind him of his former life. When she had learned of Sally, her relationship to Booker/Comstock (Bookerstock?), and her predicament as a Little Sister, Elizabeth had waited for the right moment to go to Bookerstock and set him on her trail. Her plan worked exactly as she had foreseen; now if she had only looked a little further to see her death at the drill of that particular Big Daddy.

From what she deduced, she had woken up in the Sea of Doors only to succumb to her guilt of leaving Sally in Fontaine's Department Store. After using her powers to come up with a plan, she had returned to Rapture, where she had collapsed from a quantum superposition into an ordinary person, void of even her severed pinkie and its thimble. Utilizing her own talents and education, she had survived both Bathysphere Deluxe and a return trip to Columbia, resulting in everything that she was responsible for and her own death.

"The doors opened for me one last time." Elizabeth was nearing the end of her story. "I saw you on the plane, saw you save the Little Sisters, bring down both Ryan and Fontaine, and escort the Little Sisters to the surface. Just before I died, Sally came to me. She sang 'La Vie En Rose' to me, and then I died. And you know the rest."

Jack was quiet, his mind buzzing as Elizabeth's story and more questions swirling around, threatening to overwhelm. As fantastical as his own story was, hers was magnitudes stranger than his. Were it not for the vividness of her recollections, the photographs of the Tears to Columbia, and the Tear itself, he'd be strongly inclined to say that she was either a liar or completely insane.

No matter how incredible something was however, if there was proof for it, it was therefore true. After everything that he had experienced in Rapture, he didn't think that anything would ever stun him again, but damn, had he been wrong.

"Jack?" Elizabeth asked, a note of worry in her voice.

"I believe you," Jack said, perhaps a bit too quickly. "I mean...I'm still trying to believe it, but I believe you. Wait a moment." He glanced back at the Tear and pointed at it. "If you and Booker erased Columbia from existence, how is there a Tear to Columbia?"

"In the Sea of Doors, Time is...different, to say the least." Elizabeth scrunched her brow as she tried to come up with an explanation. "Time isn't linear there. Everything behind the doors exists and happens at the same time. Depending on when Booker and I arrived here, the Tear to Columbia should disappear shortly afterwards."

Jack was about to continue when he noticed the Tear. Something was beginning to happen to it; the humming noise that it emitted began to stutter, the edges of the Tear distorting and contracting. The old-timey buildings flickered as though they were going out like an old light. At the very center of the Tear, a bright pinprick of light appeared. Slowly but surely, it grew to encompass the entire Tear. Instead of a perfect, humming sphere, the Tear was now a distorted, crackling, and fluctuating white rip in space/time.

"The hell?" Jack finally said.

"What did I tell you?" Elizabeth said. "Right now, from Rapture's perspective of that term, I just drowned Booker in the Sea of Doors." Sorrow was strong in her voice at the end of the sentence. "Zachery Hale Comstock and all the evil he wrought has been erased from reality, and other than the Luteces, I'm all on my own."

Jack felt the urge to reassure her that she wasn't, not anymore, but the Tear's stuttering increased, indicating that something serious was about to happen. Just when Jack was about to grab Elizabeth and make a run for the door, a dot appeared in the middle of the Tear, expanding until the white had been banished to the edge of the Tear. The stuttering and distortion gave way once again to humming and spherical perfection, objects appearing in the Tear.

"Elizabeth?" Jack said as he cautiously got to his feet. "What just happened?"

"If I had to guess, with Columbia gone and the Lutece Device still on, it locked onto another reality," Elizabeth said, getting to her feet as well. "Something tells me that this Tear is closer to our Rapture."

Jack peered closer into the Tear, squinting. It was definitely Rapture, that much he could tell, but where exactly, he wasn't sure. Where had he seen that banner before? THE GREAT SHALL NOT BE CONSTRAINED BY THE SMALL. Something moved and Jack had to walk around the Lutece Device to get a clear look at it.

With a start, he recognized the moving figures in the Tear. "Elizabeth, it's me!" he cried, pointing into the Tear. "And that first Little Sister I cured!"

It was strange, seeing himself standing there under that stupid and pretentious banner, the Little Sister hiding behind that couch, desperately hoping that the "bad man" wouldn't find and hurt her. If only she had known that he had no intention of doing so.

Of all the moments to witness in his past, this was the best. This was where he had made the first decision of his own, the first that had mattered, and the first that had made him the man he was. This was why Elizabeth had come back, to save as many Little Sisters as possible from either a life of slavery producing ADAM for Ryan Industries or becoming the victim of a crazed, ADAM-hungry splicer. This was what Elizabeth had sacrificed herself for.

Hold up, he hadn't grabbed her like that, and why was he reaching into his bag instead of using the Little Sister cure plasmid?

Jack realized what was about to happen, just before the other him pulled out a surgical knife, something that he had himself had taken from Steinman's surgery, and plunged it into the Little Sister's stomach.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Dichotomy

Elizabeth could only stare through the Tear in horror and fight to keep her gorge down.

In the Tear, the other Jack slashed upward with his knife after stabbing the Little Sister. The visible wound and any damage done to the girl's organs would already be healing, but not fast enough. Dropping the knife, the other Jack jammed his hand into the wound, rooting around for the ADAM slug.

"NO!" Elizabeth jumped as Jack's roar of horror and anger wrent the air. He started forward, only to stumble and fall to his hands and knees.

"Jack!" Elizabeth ran to his side, supporting him by a shoulder as he got back to his feet. Another scream rent the air, this one distorted by the double tone of a Little Sister and by the humming of the Tear. Both Jack and Elizabeth looked up, just in time to see the other Jack harshly pull his blood-covered hand out of the Little Sister's abdomen, the slug squirming in his grasp. The Little Sister's struggle ceased as her body dissolved into vomit green gas, which quickly expanded to obscure first his hand, then his arm, and finally all of the other Jack.

Elizabeth's heart was somehow pounding like a jack hammer and breaking at the same time. This other version of Jack had just taken everything that she had done, everything that she had been through, and spat in her face. Instead of defending the Little Sisters from the splicers and saving them from their wardens, this Jack elected to harvest their slugs, to take their ADAM for himself and increase his own power at the expense of their lives.

This Jack and his existence was an insult to the man standing right next to her and to her sacrifice. He was the perfect heir to both Andrew Ryan and to Frank Fontaine, to inherit this city and their legacies.

The Jack right beside her let out another roar, this one incoherent with outrage and fury. Without tripping this time, he charged at the Tear, not even bothering with any weapons, not even his wrench. With his suit, plasmids, and rage, Jack would be likely to tear his alternate apart with his bare hands.

Elizabeth was torn. As much as she wanted to see the Little Sister avenged and the other Jack put down for his actions, traversing a Tear wasn't a good idea (if she had learned one thing from her time in Columbia, it was that).

Just as Jack was about to go through the Tear and attack his counterpart, the Tear shrunk into a crack and then into oblivion. Jack ran right between the Lutece Device's pillars unhindered, still existing only in the current reality. On the other side of the device, Jack slid to a stop and spun around to the control panel of the device.

Standing there, one hand upon the lever and unnoticed until now, was Robert Lutece, as immaculate and as calm as ever. Rosalind Lutece stepped out from behind the other pillar. She had some kind of radio in her hands, probably a remote controller for the Lutece Device by the look and design of it.

"Bring it back!" Jack growled at Robert, almost baring his teeth. "Bring him back or so help me-"

"You'll what?" Robert asked, raising an eyebrow. "You've seen firsthand that bullets don't do a thing to either of us, and neither will your plasmids."

"And that's really all you have," Rosalind added, fiddling with the remote's controls. "You're the apex predator of Rapture, but you can't do a thing to me or my brother."

"What are you doing here?" Elizabeth interrupted, staring in confusion at the Twins. "I thought that you were done seeing me."

"We're not here specifically for you," Robert explained, waving a hand at the Lutece Device. "We're here to dismantle Suchong's knockoff of our device-"

"And to teach Mr. Ryan here a lesson," Rosalind added, pointing a screwdriver at Jack.

"Me?" Jack gaped at her. "What for?"

"For that little thing not so long ago," Robert said, looking down his nose at Jack. "When you abandoned Elizabeth to the tender mercies of post-Civil War Rapture-"

"Because of her previous choices regarding one Frank Fontaine." Rosalind finished.

"He came back to me," Elizabeth protested. "He saved me from that Big Daddy, and I forgave him for leaving me."

"True," Rosalind shrugged. "Nevertheless, we believed it educational for Mr. Ryan to understand that he is a rare breed of man, capable of both great good-"

"And great evil," Robert intoned. "What you just saw is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the evil that he could unleash upon the world."

"You opened that Tear," Elizabeth realized, her jaw dropping open. "You used that remote to direct the Device to another reality when Columbia was erased. You showed us that."

She glanced at Jack, worried about how he was taking this. He looked ready to vomit; his face was twisted in a rictus of pain, horror, and misplaced guilt. He had just seen another version of himself, who at some point in time had been the exact same person as himself, murder an innocent little girl so that he could have all of her ADAM. So that he would have all the power he needed, or believed that he needed, no matter who got in the way.

Jack clutched at his midsection like he was trying to stave off being sick. His face had turned pale, and his breathing was increasing rapidly. At this rate he was either to vomit all over the place or pass out.

"Jack!" Elizabeth rushed to his side, grabbing his shoulder and supporting him as best as he could. "Deep breaths, Jack. Just take deep, steady breaths, like this."

She began taking in deep breaths, inhaling slowly and then exhaling just as slowly. Jack caught on and began doing the same. He was hunched, supporting his arms upon his knees to keep from falling. As they continued breathing together, Elizabeth slipped an arm around his shoulders as best as she could. Between his broad back and his suit, she couldn't quite make it.

"At the very least," Rosalind observed, "he seems to be taking the lesson to heart."

Elizabeth looked up and glared at her and Robert. "You didn't have to do this," she snapped.

"Maybe, maybe not," Robert shrugged as he took out a piece of chalk and began marking areas on the Device. "Did he know that you were planning on using Suchong's Device to find another reality, perhaps one with a living Booker DeWitt?"

Elizabeth glanced down at her old dress, which had managed to survive in Cupid's Arrow even after all this time. Following her abandonment in the Toy store, she'd remembered the way down to Bathysphere Deluxe, the Silver Fin Restaurant, and the only Lutece Device in the city. Without Jack's seal of approval, her chances of surviving Rapture had plummeted. Her plan had indeed been to leave Rapture for another universe and time, preferably one where she wouldn't stick out and where a version of Booker lived.

It wasn't the best plan. Finding a universe where Booker lived would have taken time, even with his branch of the multiverse being right next door to Comstock's, but she hadn't been swimming in alternatives and had no issue admitting that.

"That was my plan, yes," she said as much to the Twins. "Staying in Rapture wasn't the best choice, and your Device provided the best way out."

"She is speaking in the past tense," Rosalind observed, eyes on the remote. "The option to leave via a Tear is still open. The urgency to destroy this iteration of our Device-"

"Isn't that extreme," continued Robert. "And yet she had decided otherwise before we arrived."

Both he and Rosalind looked up from their tasks to regard her, the former with a knowing half-smile, the latter with a spark of curiosity. "What has changed?" they both said, their tone each showing what they individually meant.

Elizabeth glanced down at Jack, who was just beginning to recover from the shock of seeing his dimensional counterpart harvesting that first Little Sister. There was still a lot to learn about Jack, but she could tell that through his actions, this version of him had become a good man throughout the course of his journey through Rapture. The blank slate he had been was filled in, and the result was someone she was happy to know.

"Before, my only friend was Booker," she explained, helping Jack to fully stand up. "When I was alone with just my power, I let it corrupt me, turning me into a cold, heartless goddess who saw people as things to be manipulated and used. Now," she gestured to Jack, "I have him, Tenenbaum, and the former Little Sisters. And I'm never going back."

Robert gave a nod of approval, while Rosalind sniffed. "Choosing to stay here in this reality is your prerogative," she stated, "as finishing up our business here is ours."

"We do have one final favor to ask of you," Robert said as he stepped back from the Device and nodded at his handiwork. "It is imperative that the Tear technology doesn't fall into the wrong hands, or any hands at all."

"While the saying that 'humanity isn't ready for this' never fails to annoy," Rosalind sighed, "I must say that it is certainly applicable in regards to our Device."

"The easiest way to ensure this," Robert continued, "is to simply blow it up. Proximity mines placed at each circled point will do the job. I believe that you have already replaced the mines you used to uncover the entrance to Suchong's secret lab?"

"All those explosives when he simply could have taken a hold of that countertop and pulled." Rosalind rolled her eyes. "I smell a hint of pyromania on this one."

Jack made a face on her. "I'll do your dirty work, if it means that you'll leave sooner."

"Excellent," Robert said, choosing to ignore Jack's invective words and tone. "We'll simply gather up the blueprints and documents and we'll be on our way."

"Is it alright if I keep the pictures?" Elizabeth asked. Even she could hear the desperation in her voice. "Please, they're all I have of Booker."

Rosalind gave a barely perceptible shrug. "There is nothing in them to allow one a glimpse into the workings of Tear technology, so I don't see any reason why you should not."

"And that's not quite true," Robert interjected. "Mr. Wynand, I believe that I gave you something belonging to Ms. DeWitt?"

Jack gave him a completely blank look, before his eyes widened and he smacked himself in the head with a gloved hand. "Ow," he winced, "I am such a knucklehead."

He opened his bag and began rooting through it. "Now, where is it?" he muttered to himself. "I put it in here somewhere...ah, here we are!"

He took something out of it and presented it to her in the palm of his gloved hand. "Does this look familiar to you, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth peered down into his hand and her breath caught. It was her old bird pendant, the one that Booker had chosen for her. As if expecting it to disappear, she carefully picked it up with both hands, her fingertips brushing over its smooth surface.

"Oh my," she trailed off, unable to finish. "This is my pendant, the one Booker chose for me. I lost it after that Big Daddy killed me. How did-" She looked up to find the Luteces, their remote, and the Device's blueprints all gone. "Of course," she sighed.

"Do they do that all the time?" Jack asked.

"As of a matter of fact, yes," Elizabeth sighed. "Let's gather up the pictures and destroy the Device. Then we can be on our way."

"Gladly," Jack answered, raising a hand and beginning to telekinetically summon those photos out of her reach.

Between the two of them, the pictures and their other things were quickly gathered up. Once that was finished, Jack attached a proximity mine onto each of the areas outlined by Robert and went to stand by the door with Elizabeth, loading a frag grenade into his launcher.

Elizabeth fiddled with her ribbon and her two pendants while she waited. She felt it buzz out of nowhere, startling her enough to drop it. Before it could hit the ground, it suddenly changed course, flying through the air and coming to a halt, hovering about a foot from Jack's outstretched hand.

"I don't think the 'Amazing Vanishing Gingers' would appreciate you dropping that after whatever they did to get it back," he quipped, walking up to her, his grenade launcher under one arm. When the pendant was hanging over her cupped hands, he released his hold on it, dropping it in.

"How does it do that anyway?" Jack asked as she finally attached it to the ribbon alongside the Lighthouse. The pendant buzzed again, the Cage disappearing beneath the static and the Bird reappearing.

"Constants and variables," Elizabeth answered, going over the clasps to make sure they would hold. "I am essentially every version of Elizabeth Comstock that ever existed, compiled into one version of her the moment that Comstock was eliminated from the multiverse. My clearest memories are of the versions of me that succeeded in destroying the Siphon and fully gaining their power.

"In some of those memories, Booker chose the Bird pendant. In others, he chose the Cage. This pendant," she held up the ribbon, "is a quantum superposition. It is simultaneously the Bird and the Cage and neither of them at the same time."

Jack grimaced and raised a hand to rub his head. "All of this time travel, other worlds, quantum stuff is giving me a headache."

"You're far from the first," Elizabeth told him. "Mind giving me a hand with this?" she asked, holding out the ribbon to him.

When he shook his head and took the ribbon after removing his gloves, Elizabeth turned and slid a hand to the back of her neck to hold up her hair. She felt Jack come to stand right next to her. Her pendants came into her line of vision from above and behind, situated in the middle of ribbon while Jack's hands held the ends. The ribbon was lowered and then disappeared from her line of sight as Jack brought them back to rest on her throat. She felt the ribbon tighten around her neck, and a half-panicked thought flashed through her mind that this was a vulnerable position to be in.

She squashed the thought with the reminder that this was Jack, this world's Jack, her Jack, and this was probably the safest she could be outside of Tenenbaum's hideout. She felt him carefully securing the ribbon at the back of her neck, making it snug without choking her. It was impressive how he could handle something so small with hands like his.

"How does it look?" she asked, turning back to him and letting her hair fall back over her shoulders.

Jack took a moment to look over his handiwork, and over her as well. Elizabeth felt a flush come to her face. She knew that she was attractive, and had become used to being leered at, especially down in Rapture. Unlike the men who undressed her with their eyes, Steinman for instance, Jack's look was one of honest admiration before he focused back on her pendants.

"They look good on you," he stated. "The dress looks swell by the way, but we might want to find something that's more, you know, in style."

Elizabeth looked down at her dress and nodded, the extra blood draining from her face before he noticed. "You're right," she admitted. "At the time, I thought that I would be leaving Rapture for another universe and time. I'm amazed that it was still in one piece."

"Why did you leave it in that adult store?" Jack asked. "I assume that's where you had it; it's where you left your other outfit."

"When I first came to Rapture, I needed clothes that fit the city and time. I came across an outfit in that dressing room, took it, and left my old one in return."

A thought crossed Elizazbeth's mind, forcing her to fight from keeping a smile from coming across her face.

"So," she drew out the word, "you went into Cupid's Arrow. Why, I wonder?" She gave him the most severe look she could manage..

Jack's face turned tomato-red as blood rushed in to signal his embarrassment. "Why, I-I was looking for you!" he sputtered. "I didn't want to risk passing you by and letting some splicer get you-"

He stopped and squinted at her. "You're not really upset with me, are you?"

She couldn't hold it in anymore, and burst out laughing. After everything that she had been through, it felt good to laugh, and to laugh hard. She could practically feel the stress rolling off her shoulders as she let the guffaws loose.

Jack was trying hard to make an upset face at her, but a smile kept flickering across his face. After a few tries at keeping his face disapproving, he gave up and joined her in a few chuckles. Once she had gotten it out of her system, he raised the launcher and gestured with it towards the Device.

"Any last words for the thing that's factored so much into your life?" he asked.

Elizabeth thought about it for a moment before facing the Device. "For all the horrors I've witnessed, for the rest I've lost from the nightmares, for having to kill my father and best friend, and for dying twice-" She threw up a hand in a crude gesture at the machine. "Screw you!"

Tenenbaum's face and those of the girls' floated up to the forefront of her mind, and she was reminded of the man standing next to her. She dropped the offensive gesture and a small smile crossed her face. "And for the good people that have come into my life, thank you," she finished softly.

Turning to Jack, she nodded that she was done. Raising the launcher and aiming it, he fired a single grenade at the Device before grabbing her and hustling through the entrance doors. He jumped to the side and had her pressed to the wall when the grenade and the proximity mines exploded in the room.

Jack stayed like that for a long moment. Elizabeth was beginning to wonder if he was doing this on purpose (and was a little surprised to find that part of her didn't mind) when Jack stepped away from her and peered into the restaurant.

He let out a low, long whistle. "No one's using that Device ever again," he said, moving aside so that she could see.

He was right. While the body of the Device was still intact, blackened and burned, but still intact, the fine parts of it that determined its function were beyond repair or even identification. The housings for the cathode ray tube and the carbon dioxide scrubber on the other side of the Device would be smashed and twisted, while the remains of the heat sink lay scattered and broken all over the dais and the floor. If the Device had been in this condition over a year ago, she would have had no chances at all of repairing it.

"Well, that's taken care of," Jack said, resting his launcher over one shoulder. "Want to head back to Tenenbaum's? She and the girls are probably worried sick by now."

"Yeah, that sounds nice," Elizabeth said before glancing down at her outfit. "Would it hurt to find a clothing store? As much as this one holds sentimental value, it doesn't fit in. And my other outfit is falling apart at the seams, along with smelling of rotting corpse."

"Don't you have a place somewhere in Rapture?" Jack asked as they began descending down the stairs to the Silver Fin's lobby. "I'm assuming that you didn't just wear that one outfit the whole time you were Cohen's disciple?"

Elizabeth almost stopped and smacked her forehead. "Let's just hope that there's enough left there for us to salvage. I never had much in the way of a security system, even before the war."

"That's fine by me," Jack said, as they approached the entrance to the Silver Fin. "I'm sick of being shot at by some turret or having a damn camera sic bots on me."

Before Elizabeth could point out that her apartment could have been taken by someone else and a security system put in, the doors to the Silver Fin opened.

In walked a nightmare of a splicer. Their bulbous head was almost completely bald, sporting a small growth of hair on the top. Their features looked like they had melted off to the point that their ears, lips, and nose were gone, leaving only indentations to indicate that they had ever been there. Purple crystal growths dotted their chest, shoulders, and arms. Their right arm was missing its sleeve, revealing the crystals jutting out of its pale flesh, veins lighting up as lightning raced from the crystals through his flesh. Instead of nails, the fingers of the right hand sported crystalline claws, electricity sparking and arcing between them.

Before the splicer could say a word or throw lightning at them, Jack raised his hand and gestured at it. There was a burst of air and the splicer was sent flying out the door with a distorted yell.

"What the hell was that?" Jack yelled as he and Elizabeth ran for cover on the opposite sides of the door.

"Jockey Splicer," Elizabeth grunted as she collided with the wall and peered around the corner. Unfortunately, the door finished sliding back into place in front of her, completely blocking the view to the outside. "A splicer who's had too much Shock Jockey."

"I liked it better when the good plasmids were too expensive for these bozos to get," Jack said, peering around his corner and loading a new frag grenade into his launcher.

The door opened again, prompting Elizabeth to aim her pistol and Jack to bring up a fistful of lightning, both ready to shoot or zap anything that came in sight. For a long moment, nothing happened. Nothing moved, there were no sounds. For a brief instant, Elizabeth hoped that Jack's usage of Sonic Boom had scared off the electric splicer.

"Jack Ryan!" an electrically distorted voice rang out, sounding like one of the strange songs that she and Booker had heard coming from a Tear. "We know that's you in there! We ain't moving from this spot 'til you give us what we want!"

"Well, what do you want?" Jack yelled back. The lightning disappeared from his hand and a whirlwind appeared around his fore and middle fingers. He snapped his fingers towards the entrance, laying out cyclone traps. "If it's Elizabeth, you can just forget it!"

"You can keep Cohen's Songbird," the voice dripping with condescension despite the electronic overtones. "The Rapture Family wants Ryan's genetic key, and we're takin' itfrom ya one way or another!"

"Rapture Family?" Jack mouthed at Elizabeth, fixing her with a questioning look. Elizabeth shook her head, shrugging. She hadn't heard of these people before; probably some kind of splicer cult, like the Saturnines in Arcadia.

"There's a dozen of us, Jackie boy, and only two of you," the Jockey, likely the leader of the group, continued. "You've got yourself and Songbird, but we are the Family. Unity beats chumps like you any day!"

If this 'Family' got a hold of the key, their options for getting out of Rapture decreased by a huge margin. Jack looked askance for a moment as he considered their options, before his face set into a determined scowl.

"Well, the Rapture Family can go screw itself!" he yelled. "You want this key, you'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers!" He glanced over to Elizabeth and gave her a grim smile, hefting his launcher. They were going to have to fight their way out of this, once again.

"The end of Ryan is the end of the self!" bellowed the Jockey. "Go get 'em boys. For Doc Lamb!"

As a group of leadhead and thuggish splicers jumped out from behind cover and Jack fired a grenade into their midst, Elizabeth heard a familiar sound behind them despite the yelling and the exploding grenade and turned around. The round hatch behind them had opened and the turret that Suchong had threatened her with the first time she had left the Silver Fin was slowly raising from its hiding place.

"Jack!" she cried, pointing. "Turret!"

Jack turned and caught sight of the device. Instead of hitting it with Electro-Bolt or something, he turned back and flicked his hand like he was throwing a baseball, sending a blue globule of Security Bullseye flying through the door to hit a survivor of the grenade blast. They were instantly coated in blue fluid with what looked like blue fireflies dancing around them. The Turret immediately stopped aiming at them and instead targeted the unfortunate splicer, unleashing a flurry of lead.

As the splicer screeched in pain and tried to find shelter, Jack jumped out from behind cover to stand behind the turret. As it finished off the splicer and turned to target her, he simply reached out and grabbed it. An arc of electricity jumping from his hand to the machine. With a wet, guttering sound, the turret's red light turned to green and turned from her back to the door, turning red again as it opened fire again.

"What did you do?" she yelled, pointing at the turret as Jack got back behind cover.

"Instant hack for turrets!" he yelled back. "Learned it from the research camera! One of the best things I picked up in this city!"

They both jumped when lightning shot through the door and hit the turret multiple times, shorting it out until the poor thing was sent flying backwards, exploding when it hit the lobby desk.

Leaning out, Jack gestured and a copy of himself, cowering and trying to shield itself with its arms, appeared among the splicers. The Jockey attacked without thought or reservation, the electricity going right through the apparition and striking its comrades, resulting in them convulsing and screaming. As she leaned and fired on them, Jack did the same, shooting the Jockey, with his research camera. When the apparition disappeared, and the surviving splicers the Jockey had hit turned on him, she and Jack both retreated behind their corners.

The camera spat out a bunch of pictures, which Jack eagerly grabbed and flipped over. A vicious grin spread over his face as he presumably read over the analysis of the Jockey's genetic structure and weaknesses.

"Mr. Jockey, I've got you now," he crowed. "Liz! I've got an idea for how to kill this son of a bitch!"

A yell sounded from outside, prompting both of them to peer out. A thuggish splicer was running full steam ahead at them, waving a wrench above his head as he approached. Crossing the threshold, he stepped on one of the cyclone traps, catapulting him straight up into the ceiling of the entryway, impacting with a loud crack. His body hit the ground, head bleeding and neck at an unnatural angle.

"When they've set off the other traps, I've got an idea for how to take down the Jockey," Jack yelled to her, switching out his launcher for his tommy gun. "I'll explain it as best as I can."

The splicers had all taken cover now, forcing her to switch over to Jack's crossbow to begin sniping at any body parts that stuck out while Jack opened up on anyone who tried to get a shot off at them with fire, lightning, and bullets. The thuggish splicers they avoided shooting at, letting them set off the cyclone traps to conserve ammo. At one point, a nitro splicer made to throw a grenade at them; Jack simply set his explosives stachel on fire with a snap of Incinerate, resulting in the splicer dropping his grenade, screeching as he tried to get it off. Ironically, it was the grenade he had dropped that detonated first, killing him and setting the others off.

In between shooting at their assailants and taking cover from return fire, Jack explained his plan to Elizabeth. It was crazy and dangerous, but it sounded better than continuing the shoot-out. When the last cyclone trap had been set off, Jack leaned out with his chemical thrower and sent jets of flame roaring out to keep the splicers back and down. Injecting a full EVE hypo, Elizabeth turned fully invisible and crawled out into the entryway, praying that the heat she felt on her back wouldn't become an inferno from mishandling.

She moved fast, finding cover behind a merchandise stand between the maintenance room where she had first found entrance to the Silver Fin and the Silver Fin itself. She sat down behind it and loaded the shotgun with exploding buckshot before leaning out to locate the Jockey. He was hiding behind one of the stands, one of the ceiling-high water tanks for bathysphere display right behind him. She cocked the gun and waited for Jack to distract them.

"Come on ya filthy splicers, ya wanna live forever?!" Jack's voice roared out. He appeared in the Silver Fin's entrance, holding and firing his tommy gun with one hand while shooting off Electro-Bolt with the other. The whole picture of a final last stand, and the perfect distraction.

Elizabeth came out from behind her cover, aimed the shotgun, and fired all four rounds, one after the other. Despite the kickback, both the effect on aiming and the new bruise forming on her shoulder, Elizabeth was able to consistently hit the glass behind the Jockey in roughly the same area.

As the last shot hit its target, the first round exploded, showering the Jockey and its nearby allies with shards of glass. The second, third, and fourth rounds detonated one after the other, each one tearing through the amazingly durable material. With an accompanying loud crack, the fourth round succeeded in penetrating the glass, sending a deluge of salt water right onto the Jockey.

The result was near-instantaneous: The Jockey began to shriek and howl in its strange, distorted voice as gallons of sea water gushed over it, convulsing as electricity jumped between its crystals growths on its chest, arms, and fingers. As the water hit the floor and spread, the other splicers were sent into convulsions as the water reached their feet, acting as a medium for the Jockey's out-of-control electrical current. Realizing this, Elizabeth quickly scrambled onto the stand she had been using as cover, using the shelves as steps.

A gunshot went off and pain blossomed in her shoulder, almost throwing her off the stand. A leadhead shifted to aim her weapon again, only for Jack to open up with his tommy gun and a roar. The splicer's body jerked and flailed as bullet upon bullet slammed into her, finally sending her body falling to the ground.

Jack continued to fire and roar until he had used up his clip. After glancing up to make sure she was alright, he switched from his tommy gun to his wrench, turning to the splicers caught in the water. He stepped fully into the water, not even noticing or reacting to the electric current flowing through it. He set about whacking the twitching and screeching splicers with his wrench one by one, silencing them though not ending their convulsions. He saved the Jockey for last, stomping over to him through the water. He had to strike the splicer multiple times with his wrench, sending violet crystals flying everywhere with each blow, until finally the Jockey's body flipped over in midair, the electric current ceasing to flow at last.

"Elizabeth!" Jack cried as he turned from the Jockey's fallen corpse and splashed through the spreading water to her. "Are you alright?" he asked as he came up to the stand, arms outstretched to her.

Elizabeth checked her shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm alright, she just grazed me," she answered, leaning down and bracing her hands on Jack's shoulders. He carefully grasped her waist and picked her up off the stand, slowly lowering her to the ground.

Elizabeth let out a gasp as her feet dipped down into the water, the sensation of freezing cold sweeping through her feet, up into her legs and into her body, a cold chill quickly crawling up her spine.

"Sorry!" Jack winced, taking a First Aid kit out of his bag and opening it, taking out a cloth and a small syringe of Medical ADAM. He carefully cleaned up the wound before gently inserting the hypo into the flesh of her shoulder just above the wound, eliciting another gasp from her.

"Sorry," Jack winced again.

"It's alright, on both accounts," Elizabeth reassured him, checking her shoulder. She couldn't help but watch with a morbid interest as the wound healed within seconds, leaving only a thin scar where the bullet had carved a furrow in her skin. "Rapid cell growth of that level can't be good," she observed.

"That's what I thought," Jack admitted. "However, since we both have multiple plasmids, a lot in my case, and neither of us have yet to show any signs of ADAM sickness, I think you'll be alright."

"I wonder what's responsible for that?" Elizabeth said as she straightened her sleeve and took out four rounds of ordinary buckshot from her own bag. "Booker had eight Vigors-Columbian Plasmids-and each one had ten times the ADAM that an injectable version of each Vigor would require," she explained as she reloaded the shotgun. "All that ADAM, and yet he showed no signs of becoming a splicer. My guess is that he had some kind of immunity to the damaging effects of ADAM, which he passed on to me," she finished by pumping the shotgun.

"Makes sense to me," Jack said as he began reloading his own weapons. "If the same goes for me, that means that either dear old Dad or Mom would have been a plasmid powerhouse if they had taken to splicing. Sounds like something to ask Tenenbaum."

"Speaking of which," Elizabeth said as she leaned down and plucked one of the masks the splicers had been wearing, "we might want to ask Tenenbaum about this 'Rapture Family'."

She held up the mask, indicating the blue butterfly motif affixed to the mask's forehead. In all the excitement, they had failed to notice it until now. It was a Blue Margot, to be precise, and from the other masks still covering their owners' faces or floating in the water, it was a common symbol among the members of the Rapture Family.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Jack said, finishing up with reloading his weapons. "First though, we should probably check in with them, and I'd prefer to do that from somewhere that's safer, relatively speaking of course."

"That sounds good to me," Elizabeth responded, beginning to duck step through the water, the flow of which was beginning to abate as the water level in the tank began to approach the hole she had punched through. "After that, let's find a clothing store, find something for me that isn't out of date, or has bullet holes."

"I thought I apologized for that already," Jack said, making a face at her.

"I thought you were apologizing for me getting sho-" Elizabeth began indignantly. She paused, noticing the upward quirk of Jack's lips. "You're kidding with me, aren't you?"

The quirk became a smirk which became a single loud chuckle. "Yes," Jack admitted. "Seriously though," his face quickly morphing back into seriousness, "I am sorry that your dress got a bullet through it."

"It's alright," Elizabeth waved him off as they began to carefully descend down the miniature waterfall that had been a flight of stairs. "I can get that fixed, ironically not as easily as medical ADAM fixes wounds."

In the middle of the stairs, she slipped and almost fell forward. Jack was quick to be at her side, stopping her fall and supporting her with his shoulder and arms. She smiled and nodded her thanks as they got to the end of the stairs. Elizabeth continued to lean back on Jack for a few more steps before righting herself. Glancing back, she saw the look of surprise on Jack's face, allowing herself a small smile as they began to retrace their steps out of her past and into the future.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11:  Commiserations

Jack stretched and sighed, keeping his eyes on the front of the store. Standing guard while Elizabeth tried on new clothes was boring, but that was a good thing. It wouldn't be fun to be caught with half of his weapons, now her weapons, in the back room she was using as a changing room and not out here to back him up. Not unless Elizabeth was willing to charge out of the room no matter her state of dress to help him out.

A procession of images began in Jack's mind depicting that very scenario, each one featuring slightly more and more skin. Jack shook his head hard and smacked himself before it progressed too far. It wasn't right to imagine Elizabeth like that.

"Ow." Unfortunately, he was still getting used to his spliced-up strength. It was easy to throw everything he had into swinging a wrench at a splicer's head; dialing it back for ordinary things, that was a bit harder. At least he was successful when it came to not hurting other people. He had a lot to learn when it came to not damaging himself.

"Jack, are you alright?" Elizabeth's concerned voice floated out from behind the closed door. "Is anything wrong?"

Yeah, Jack thought, I'm perving on you like a creep.

Out loud, he answered, "Everything's alright, Elizabeth. I'll holler if someone, or something, turns up."

He heard Elizabeth's hum of acknowledgement and then the rustling of clothes. Sighing again, Jack fumbled around in his bag for a pack of cigarettes. Finding his Nicotime, he stuck one into his mouth and snapped his fingers to produce a flame. He kept the flame dancing on his fingertips, considering it as he puffed the cigarette and sent clouds of blue smoke into the air.

After he and Elizabeth had retraced their steps out of Bathyspheres Deluxe, he had radioed Tenenbaum to tell her that they were alright and to also ask her about this "Doc Lamb" character. From what Tenenbaum had told them, "Dr. Sofia Lamb" had been a psychiatrist who had challenged Ryan's viewpoint and amassed a following of her own. After it was "discovered" that she was a closet pinko, she and her closest followers were arrested and taken to some "secret" prison in the ocean trench on Rapture's outermost ends.

Judging from the splicer gang, their ferocity and loyalty, and the blue butterflies on their masks, Dr. Lamb had changed her career from psychiatrist to "cult leader". Jack rolled his eyes; so not only had his dad let nutcases like Steinman and Cohen, and megalomaniacs like Fontaine, into his city, but he had also let in a charismatic collectivist? Honestly, he had been just begging for something like this to happen. The best of humanity, and the worst of it, all trapped in a reverse-fish bowl on the bottom of the ocean. No wonder things had gone so wrong, so fast.

And this Dr. Lamb. It was obvious what she wanted: Rapture. Whatever it was that she believed in, that she preached to her followers, her goals and means were little better than Ryan or Fontaine's. "Just another set of fanatics with another set of books," Elizabeth had said on the way to the Ladieswear store on the Pavilion's store floor with a disgusted and dismissive tone.

Jack couldn't understand what Dr. Lamb saw in Rapture. Fontaine had been right when he'd said that Rapture was the "puke stain of Ryan's busted dream". There had been things in Rapture that were worth saving, the Little Sisters and Elizabeth for example, but he was right about Rapture. It was a living, breathing hellscape of a city, and anyone who wanted it had something wrong with them.

As for how to escape, that was a tricky one. They could camp out on the lighthouse above and hope for someone to pass by and hitchhike (heh, hike). If asked, they could just say that they were survivors from the plane crash and no, they had no idea what a lighthouse was doing all the way out there. However, there hadn't been thirty-nine children on board the plane when it had taken off (at least he hoped not), so anyone with access to the plane's manifest would be sure to ask questions. And questions that could lead to someone else finding Rapture was something that he wanted to avoid.

Even if he managed to get back to the States, there was the issue of the plane's manifest again. He'd have to be quiet in returning to Kansas; any major news coverage of a survivor from the plane crash would lead to questions. If Jack Wynand simply and quietly returned home, there was a chance that no one in a position of power would ever notice. His parents' farm was isolated and they didn't really know anyone from the surrounding farms or from the nearest town.

A bunch of realizations washed over him as the words he had used fully registered: Kansas, where the population was sparse and rural. Home and parents, when in reality it had been his cage and they actors and his caretakers. How much had they known about his true purpose? Had they figured him for some kind of mental case, or had they known about Rapture and the role he had been made to play? The isolation from the neighbors and from town, that had been to make sure that no one else would come across him and possibly discover the truth.

Ever since the revelation of the truth to him, he had been too busy to consider everything that it meant. Now though, he was realizing what it meant. It meant that all the nice, pleasant memories that he had of Kansas had been fake, and that everything else: Growing up in Rapture with Tenenbaum and Suchong as his "parents" and Fontaine as an "uncle" (or second father) - leaving home to exist in some dream state - coming back to see what had become of his childhood home - learning that his real father and mother had been Andrew Ryan and Jasmine Jolene, that was real.

His heart was pounding and his head with it. He was faintly aware of the cigarette falling from his lips as he leaned forward, his hands attempting to squeeze his brains out of his head. He couldn't tell if the pressure was making it worse, or if it wasn't working and the pounding in his head was getting more intense by itself. Half of him didn't care, while the other half was just screaming.

The horror, the ugliness, and the death, that was what was real. It was ALL that was real.

"Jack? Jack, are you alright? Jack? Jack, say something to me! Jack!"

The worried, feminine voice gave him something to fixate on other than the memories and the pounding. The much softer pressure of a smaller hand became apparent on the back of his neck, and he was aware of a presence to the side of him. Somehow, all three, the voice, the hand, and the presence were enough to halt the pounding, both in frequency and in strength. As the voice continued to speak and the hand rubbed circles, it began to subside.

Jack slowly became aware of his surroundings. The woman's face came into focus, and Jack remembered that it was Elizabeth, who he was supposed to be guarding from a surprise splicer attack. And here he was, having some kind of panic attack, forcing her to help him instead. Some kind of protector he was.

"I'm alright, Elizabeth," he said, finally managing to straighten up. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, breathing hard. "It, it just finally sank in."

"What did?" Elizabeth asked, her brow furrowed. Her expression grew dark. "If this is because of what the Luteces showed us in the Silver Finn, I'm going to have such words with them-"

"It wasn't that," Jack interrupted. "That time, I was in shock. This time, it finally sank in. It didn't before because I was busy. Maybe I was busy on purpose so that I wouldn't think about it because subconsciously I knew it, but I didn't want to consciously think about it."

"Think about what?" Elizabeth asked, confusion on her face.

"It was all a lie," Jack replied. "All of the nice memories of me growing up on a Kansas farm with loving parents, a big fat lie. Instead, I'm a science experiment. I was taught by electrodes and made to grow with pheromones. I was nineteen years old when I should have been one. I spent my second year learning how to hack, shoot, and fight. I spent the last two years being cared for by two strangers who probably thought I was some mental case."

His voice was growing higher and more hysterical with each sentence but he couldn't stop. It was like a dam had broken in his head and mouth and he couldn't close it back up.

"I caused a plane to crash," he continued, "killing everyone onboard. I have killed dozens of people within the last few days, and have been killed, only to be brought back and thrown back into the fray. I learned that Mom and Dad were just fakes to look after me on the surface. The closest thing I ever had to actual parents were Suchong and Tenenbaum, and that was before Tenenbaum decided to be a decent human being. Fontaine said that I was the closest thing that he ever had to a son, and that becomes worse when you take into account that he and Tenenbaum were a thing for a bit.

"And as for my actual parents, Andrew Ryan, my father, was both a tyrant and a hypocrite, and I smashed his head in with his own golf club at his command. And my mother, Jasmine Jolene, was a stripper whose poster I perved out on because I didn't know she was my mother. And now, it turns out that for every decision that I've made, the ones that I was actually making and not whoever was pulling my strings, there's a world where I made the opposite decision and killed a little girl for the ADAM slug in her stomach, therefore spitting in the face of everything you did to save Sally and the other Little Sisters."

He was breathing hard now that he had finally got it all out. He kept his gaze on the floor, not wanting to see how Elizabeth would react to any of that. She was quiet for a long moment before she finally said something.

"I did both things with my father."

"What?" Jack asked, looking up at her quizzically. Elizabeth was looking at the ground now in embarrassment.

"Before I knew he was my father, I...noticed how attractive he was," she managed to get out, her cheeks turning red. "To be fair, he was a handsome man, and the first living one that I had ever seen or met, so it's not surprising that I did. One of the constants is that he and I never did anything...carnal in nature, so thank God for that one.

"And I killed him," she added. "So I did both with him. Killing and perving, that is."

"Oh," Jack said lamely. What else could one say when looking at either of their stories? Sure, there were some amazing parts, but when one got down to the bones of it, their histories were downright awful. In fact, he frowned as the thought occurred to him, there seemed to be some similarities between them.

"Elizabeth, what are we?" he asked.

"Orphans, killers, pawns, saviors, victims," she listed off. "There certainly isn't one word that can describe us in our entirety."

"No, I mean-" Jack took a moment to gather his thoughts before explaining.

"You said that there are constants and variables, things that make the worlds similar and different." At Elizabeth's nod, he continued. "Our stories have so many similarities, but so many differences. Are we constants or variables?"

Now it was Elizabeth's turn to think. Jack couldn't help but find her contemplative face cute.

"I think," she began slowly, "that we are not counterparts to each other. Our stories are very similar to each other, yes, while your role was essentially the same as the one that Booker played in Columbia. And as far as I can tell, there's no analogue for me in this universe.

"There are more constants than just a City, a Lighthouse, and a Man. There's the Opposition to the Man: Daisy Fitzroy and Frank Fontaine. And there's the Rogue who fights both the Man and the Opposition: That'd be Booker and you. Rapture doesn't appear to have a counterpart to my role in Columbia," she finished.

"So, we're not two versions of the same constant then," Jack nodded before another thought occurred to him. "Wait a moment. If Booker was your father, and Comstock was another version of him, and you're the Lamb, and Andrew Ryan was my father, does that make me the Lamb of Rapture?"

Elizabeth let out a loud snort. "Trust me, you're the Rogue here in Rapture. I didn't pick up a gun until I returned to Rapture to save Sally. Direct participation in combat wasn't and still isn't my speciality."

"You're pulling your own weight as far as I'm concerned," Jack countered. "I mean, you handled yourself pretty well when I was killed and you had to hold your own against that splicer gang. You're smaller than me and don't have nearly as many plasmids, but you're a survivor, and one of the few good ones at that."

Elizabeth blushed again. "Thanks, Jack. Now before we get drawn into another tangent on multiverse theory and the existential crises that come with that," she took a step back and twirled around in her new outfit. "What do you think?"

There hadn't been a lot of outfits to choose from. The store's inventory had been looted by those few splicers with enough sense to feel the need for new clothes, and of course some splicers had to burn, slash, or bleed on a good number of the remaining clothes. He and Elizabeth had scrounged up about half a dozen still intact outfits. They were taking all of them, no question, but Elizabeth had asked if she could check to make sure that they could at least fit.

This was something that girls, in normal circumstances, liked to do, right? Go clothes shopping, find some outfits, try them on, ask for a friend or boyfriend's opinion if one was available? Seeing as most of Elizabeth's existence was filled with the atypical, dangerous, and downright deadly, Jack had decided that she deserved to experience something "normal" for a change. Plus, if one of the outfits didn't fit her, it was best to know beforehand and not have to haul it around.

The outfit she had on now, the last one (thankfully), was honestly the best one. He had been too busy breaking down and then talking about weird Tear stuff to notice until now. Given how crazy her life had been, it was appropriate that her outfit bore a resemblance to Alice in Wonderland's outfit, only more grown-up and with the times.

It was a full circle swing dress with short sleeves and a modest, scooped neckline. It came with a standard white petticoat and a matching belt that wrapped tightly around Elizbeth's abdomen, adding dimension to the dress' solid sky-blue coloring.

While she had been struggling with the first few outfits, Jack had gone over to Shoes after laying down some Cyclone Traps, Trap Bolts, and proximity mines, of course. He had come back with a pack of black stockings, a pair of shoes, and a coat that he had scavenged off one of the newly dead splicers. The shoes were a pair of black, T-strap swing pumps with a reasonable, sturdy heel, giving her a few more inches of height without compromising her stability.

The surprisingly-nice trench coat, which the splicer must have donned recently, gave her an air of resilience and power. If it wasn't for his Big Daddy suit, Jack would have looked into getting one for himself. It wouldn't be nearly as effective at protecting him as the suit, but it would have been lighter and not nearly as hot. Comfort wasn't a luxury he could afford right now, however.

Elizabeth had finished her spin and was waiting for his thoughts. Jack swallowed and quickly gathered his thoughts. She looked amazing in her new outfit, how to get that across without sounding enamored?

"You look great," he settled on, before adding, "like you could take on Rapture and come out without a scratch."

She also looked beautiful, but he wasn't sure exactly how to tell a friend that. He wondered for a brief moment if that was something that Suchong's programming had left out, or if that was something typical for normal people, but quickly banished that line of thought.

Whatever the best response would have been, Elizabeth smiled at him. "Thank you, Jack," she said, straightening out the sides of her dress and coat. "Now that we've got that covered, how about we get some lunch at Tenenbaum's and then get back to scavenging supplies?"

"That sounds great to me," Jack answered, hefting his tommy gun. Elizabeth turned and began gathering her weapons and other things. Before she zipped up her bag, Jack caught sight of her older outfits, the old timey dress and the "Noir" blouse and skirt.

After he had recollected the proximity he had left on that elevator (it was amazing that nobody had set it off), Elizabeth had asked if they could retrieve her Rapture outfit from Cupid's Arrow. It was one of her favorites and it just needed some repairs. Jack had acquiesced to that, but almost refused when she had asked him to come into the store with her, "just in case".

His protective instincts had won out over his embarrassment, and he had gone in. His face had been beet red the entire time they were in Cupid's Arrow. While she just simply walked to the employees room and grabbed her outfit, he did his best not to look at the store's wares or Elizabeth. She hadn't said a word the entire time, but he had glimpsed a small smile on her face when she had turned to leave. His one consolation was that beneath the smirk, her face had been almost as red as his.

"Wait a minute," he said, puzzle pieces clicking into place in his head.

"What's wrong?" Elizabeth asked as she shouldered her bag, her hands reaching for the shotgun.

"When we went into Cupid's Arrow," he began slowly, looking her full in her blue eyes, "you could have just scoped out the entire joint with your x-ray vision, couldn't you?"

Elizabeth looked back at him, just as calmly. For about five seconds before bursting out laughing again.

"I'm s-sorry," she managed to gasp out, "but I couldn't re-resist, and the look on-on your face-" She couldn't articulate any further and just clutched at her middle, laughing hard.

Jack was able to keep his face disapproving for most of her outburst, eventually breaking and allowing himself to snort. "That wasn't nice," he told her when she finally came up for air.

"I-I was wondering when you would realize that," she said, gasping for breath. "I won't do that again, I promise."

Jack rolled his eyes in a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "If I remember correctly, you were red in the face yourself when we were in there."

"Of course I was," Elizabeth said as she walked past him, "but I wasn't nearly as red as you were."

Despite the truth of her words, Jack opened his mouth to protest. Before he could get a word out, however, Elizabeth held up a hand in a silent command to halt. She quickly took out the crossbow, aimed it, and then fired off a bolt. There was a screech of pain followed by the loud thump of a body hitting the ground.

Jack was quick to join Elizabeth's side, his tommy gun out and ready to spit lead. In a little alcove where three (now two) mannequins were displayed (wasn't it a bit much for full-body mannequins to be used in a jewelry store?), a newly-killed splicer lay, twitching as the bolt in her head drained her of life. Beneath her body lay another, dead for much longer and long stripped of anything useful.

"They never learn," Elizabeth snorted. "That first body right there? She tried the exact same thing the last time I was here. Comstock spotted her right away."

"Damnit," Jack swore. "I knew I should have left the defenses up when I came back. Sorry about that, Elizabeth."

"It's alright," Elizabeth brushed off his apology as she walked over to the splicer to retrieve the bolt and loot their pockets. "At least it wasn't one of those Houdini splicers. Thank God that none of them seem to have a working brain."

"Yeah, but they sure make up for it by being able to soak up lead like a sponge," Jack grumbled as he scanned over the store for any more splicers. "Elizabeth, mind if I tell you something?"

"Sure, Jack," Elizabeth straightened, pocketing some bills before walking over to him to open up his bag and put some ammo in it. "What's on your mind?"

Jack took a moment to look at her as he considered his words. He was still getting used to this "talking with people" thing. It was easier when he had the radio as an intermediate between him and the person on the other end, even more so when he hadn't been able to talk at all. Maybe it was all because he liked Elizabeth and didn't want her to think worse of him?

"When I had to choose what to do-" he began before faltering. He swallowed and started again. "What to do about the first Little Sister, I had just gotten done facing off against Steinman. He was...very frightening, more so than the other splicers I had encountered before. His audio diaries, his...decorations around the Medical Pavilion, the bodies of the women he had mutilated up on his walls like trophies-"

He couldn't help but shiver at the recollections. Damn Steinman, he would never be able to visit a doctor again after all that.

"When I was fighting him, I emptied an entire Tommy clip into him, and he just wouldn't. Go. Down. I about had a heart attack when I saw him at a Health Station. Afterwards, when I was presented with the choice between harvesting or saving that first Little Sister, I was...indecisive, about what to do. After Steinman, the idea of getting more Plasmids with the extra ADAM from harvesting sounded...worth it."

Jack hung his head. "I was stuck, caught between choosing my own life and the little girl's. I finally decided to take a chance with Tenenbaum's promise and keep my soul. It must have taken me five minutes to make up my mind, standing there, looking on while that little girl cowered and whimpered. I was that close to being that other Jack, and he was that close to being me."

He looked up back at Elizabeth, full in her blue eyes. "How can I be a good person when it takes five minutes to decide if I should kill a little girl or not?" He asked, point-blank.

Elizabeth was quiet, just looking at him. Whelp, that was it. He had just blown it.

He was turning towards the store entrance when Elizabeth answered. "Because you chose not to kill her, even when it appeared that you might not have a choice."

"It's not like it was life and death," Jack retorted. "I had already been killed and brought back at one of the Vita-Chambers. Dying because I didn't have better Plasmids wouldn't have been a problem."

"Somehow, I don't think dying over and over again would be much better," Elizabeth responded. "Jack, there's nothing wrong with being faced with a terrible choice and not immediately going with the right decision. As long as you do what's right, that's what matters.

"That other Jack, he made his choice. Before that first Little Sister, you and that other Jack were the same person. After that, there were two of you, and you are by far the better man. Never, ever think differently."

Jack could see the passion in her eyes as she spoke; she full-on believed it and that made it all the more real. He carefully slung his machine gun over his shoulder before walking forward and holding out his arms in a question.

Elizabeth smiled and walked into his arms, embracing him once again. As his arms went around her, he wished that he wasn't wearing this stupid diving suit, wished that he could hold her closer. Wearing the suit was getting older by the minute.

"Thank you, Liz," he said, glancing down at her. He noticed that while the rest of her hair was as dark as Snow White's, her roots were coming in as a lighter shade of brown. Must have dyed her hair to blend in as well. He wondered briefly what it would look like when her hair had grown out more. "That means more to me than I can say."

"You're welcome, Jack," Elizabeth replied.

When they finally separated, Elizabeth looked up at him with a quirked eyebrow. "Did you just call me Liz?" she asked.

"Uh," Jack was thrown for a moment by the curveball from left field until he remembered that he just had.

"I did," he admitted. "I'm sorry-"

"No no, it's fine," she cut him off, a thoughtful expression coming over her face. "In fact, I think I like it. Everyone's always referred to me by my full name. I like my name, but it's long and so formal. Liz."

She looked back up at him, smiling. "I like it. Thank you, Jack."

"You're quite welcome," he said, and then added, "Liz."

Her smile grew wider, and he couldn't help but grin back at her. Ok, this whole friend was pretty nice.

The moment was interrupted when a trio of splicers walked in through the doors and stopped short when they saw him and Elizabeth. As one of them charged with a roar and a raised piece of lead pipe, Jack sighed as he unslung his gun, Elizabeth brought up the crossbow, and they both turned to face their new opponents.

A few minutes later, they both strode out the doors of Ladieswear onto the second floor of Pavilion, their wallets a little heavier and their spirits a little lighter.

"How about we go back to Tenenbaum's for lunch, then get back to the job of actually finding supplies?" Jack asked.

"Sounds good to me," Elizabeth-no, Liz said, shifting her bag for better balance. "I doubt that Tenenbaum is happy with the detours we've taken."

Jack let out a snort at that. Other than his choice to save the Little Sisters and the death of Fontaine, there wasn't much that seemed to make Tenenbaum happy. Maybe once they got themselves and the Little Sisters out of Rapture, maybe she would be able to come out of the perturbed state that she was usually in.

They were at the dock where their bathysphere was waiting for them (thank God) when Liz spoke up.

"Jack, mind if I ask you something?" she asked.

"Sure," Jack replied. It was only fair, he had asked her a whopper of a question back there.

"What are you going to do about your last name?" she asked. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with the name 'Wynand', it's just that now you know the truth, I'm not sure if you'll want to keep it or find something else."

That threw Jack for a moment. He was silent in thought as he and Liz got into the bathysphere and he set the controls to take them back to Olympus Heights.

"I don't like the idea of keeping the surname 'Wynand'," he finally said. "It's a fake name, and it was probably fake for my 'parents' on the surface as well. That said, it's still a better last name than 'Ryan'."

Liz nodded in agreement. "Also, you might not want to take up his old Russian name, Rianofski. From what I've read and what little I remember, Russian names could bring a lot of suspicion, especially in the States."

Taking Ryan's original Russian name hadn't occurred to him at all, and he definitely intended on going back to the USA. The only language he knew was English, and he had no actual relatives in England (probably), so he had no real reason to go there either.

Wait a moment - relatives?

"Jolene," he said, sitting up straight.

"What?" Liz said, taking her eyes off the ocean life that was swimming by to look at him.

"My mother's name was Jasmine Jolene," he explained. "Jack Jolene; that sounds a sight better than 'Jack Ryan'."

"Actually," Elizabeth said, "her name was Mary Catherine Jolene. Jasmine was just her stage name."

"Thanks, Liz," Jack said, smiling. Jack Jolene, son of Mary Catherine Jolene. That was a name that he could live with.