Submergence

Chapter 1

The vanishing

As Jack Ryan began the slow, laborious walk back to his home he began to look at the serene view that was before him. The vast, limitless ocean and the thunderous tide were both a joy and a pain for him. The ocean was beautiful to be sure, but he couldn't help his mind wandering onto darker days as he stared upon it. It may have been three years since he had stepped foot in the underwater city known as Rapture but the memories never hazed in his mind. The sounds of the endless screaming, the voices whispering in the dark and the masks that hid monsters were all as clear to Jack as anything he ever saw after leaving the city. In truth he had not wanted to stay on the coastline but his life had taken a rather unexpected turn and he could no longer simply think of himself. When he took the journey away from the madness upon the bathysphere he did not take it alone.

Many girls of rapture had become mutated to become vessels for the infamous substance known as Adam. Their sole lives were to drink the blood of the dead and recycle this drug so that it could be re-administered into someone else and the process could be repeated. Jack had once been given the choice to either save them or destroy them. But to Jack there was no choice. He could not end the life of something so innocent even if it meant his death. In the end when his enemy Fontaine had knocked him down and Jack's life loomed towards its final moments he was rescued by these very children. After the battle they offered him the city, but he could not accept it. The city was a place of nightmares and Jack would ensure no one would have to endure what he had endured. Instead he did what his conscious told him to do, he locked down the city and left with the children and a German scientist called Dr Tenenbaum. He did not entirely trust her but Jack owed her his life and he could not leave her there to rot.

When they reached the mainland of southern England Tenenbaum and Jack parted ways. The children cried and begged her not to leave but she had made up her mind. She felt that the children were better off away from her, the creator of their torment. However before she left she gave Jack a parting gift. The shortwave radio that he had used in Rapture. 'I have tweaked it a little' she said in her thick German accent 'if the children need me then you will be able to contact me through this' and then she simply left.

Jack hid the Bathysphere in a nearby cove and walked with the girls to the local village where they took shelter stayed the night. Jack had then intended to move further in land but the girls wouldn't have it. The ocean was all that they had known and they could not simply leave it. So Jack bought a very old house that sat on the coastline. He used the money he had found In Andrew Ryans office. seeing as Jack was Andrew's only son he felt somewhat better taking it from there. It was not a very most glamorous establishment. In fact nothing about it was even close to the word glamorous. But it was a home and even though they could afford better with Jacks 'inheritance' he thought it best not to draw attention to themselves.

The years that followed were not entirely eventless. The girls began to grow up and many of them (despite Jack's reluctancely) began to go to school. But Jack still had to watch them constantly, they had lost their need to drink blood but they did not lose the urges in their minds to continue their grotesque task. Many a time did Jack have to keep one of the girls at the house due to their urges. Sometimes it would happen in school where a child would simply cut his finger on some paper or scrape his knee on the ground and the girls would go into uncontrollable spasms. They would lie on the floor shaking and shaking. The urge to drink and their self will force the child to become physically damged and leave them broken. However they were slowly growing a resistance to their urges, with the help of Jack and their own self determination the incidents were becoming far less often. The only thing that troubled Jack were the plasmids. THe girls had induced not only adam but plasmids as well giving them dorment abilties. Jack was concerned about Elizabeth his eldest the most. It had at first started small, the ocassional spark or speck of fire. But it was starting to get worse. the sparks and specks were growing to be far more frquent and far more powerful. Jack began teaching Elizabeth ways to control it given that he himself held simalar powers. It would take time, maybe years but eventually Jack believed they would be rid of the urges and tehy would be able to control their powers.

Jack couldn't help smiling as he got closer and closer to the house. Groceries in his hand. glad to be back after collected their weekly supply of food form the village. Jack did not like leaving the girls alone but he didn't have much choice, they couldn't just survive on the salt in the air. When he returned he knew he would be greeted by young smiling faces. He had been to hell but had received something that he had always wanted but never had. A family. He loved the girls unconditionally just as they all loved him. To Jack these girls were his daughters, he was bound to them as much as any father to his daughters. He felt an emotion around them he had never really felt, happiness.

But little did Jack know that the every step he made towards his home was a step closer to the realization that his world was about to flip upside down. As Jack came to the house the first thing he noticed was that the door was slightly agar. Jack knew this was peculiar as it was getting cold and the girls would not leave the door open. But as he got closer he realized to his horror that the door was not just open. But had been removed from its sockets. He ran to the door and into the house as fast as his feet could carry him. Once inside the situation looked far grimmer. The house had been ransacked and there was no sign of the girls. He mind stopped working and Jack went into a frenzy, he ran all over the house screaming the names of his daughters. When there was no response and he realized that the girls had gone he crumbled onto the floor, unable to move, unable to think. Then he heard the scream of a creature that he had thought would only ever be heard again by Jack in his nightmares.

He ran outside looking for the tinned suited freak that had stolen his daughters only to find a creature standing by the cliff that looked both familiar and foreign to him. The monster in front of him was tin suited but this was no Big Daddy. A hulking brute with a drill. No this was something else altogether. What stood before him barely resembled a young woman. However like like the Big Daddy this young woman had become an abomination. Her body was horrifically slender and tall with a large threatening needle in her right hand. She wore a helmet that was completely oval and had a large red lighten glass were her face should be.

Jack knew without a doubt that this creature was responsible for the kidnapping of his daughters and instinctively raised his hand which now crackled with electricity. He had not needed to use his powers in a long time but this did not mean he had forgotten how to use them. He sent a bolt of searing energy straight into the creatures face. The creature screamed and held her head in agony. Jack ran at the creature in a fit of rage, but the creature recovered faster than he anticipated. It dived off the edge and landed skilfully into the ocean while avoiding the sharp rocks nearby.

As Jack ran to the edge and looked out in the ocean he saw that the creature was not alone, Jack counted up to fifteen red lights growing fade in the distance. Realizing that there was one creature for every one of his daughters. He knelt on the ground in dismay. He had failed the girls and now they had been taken from him. He knew where they had gone, there was only one place those creatures could have come from, Jack knew what he had to do. He was going to have to return to the one place he swore he never would. Rapture