Dang, I am on a roll so far with this fic. Maybe it's the fact that this isn't a crossover, and I don't have to think about how to best combine two different fandoms. Maybe it's because I really like Jack and Elizabeth, both as individuals and as a couple. Whatever it is, it's great to write like this. Thanks for all the positive reviews and PMs sent my way. And please don't be afraid to offer me constructive criticism. That's one of the best things you can give a writer, and it shows you care.

Would you kindly leave a review and/or send me a PM with your thoughts and ideas? Enjoy!


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.


And now, our favorite heroine returns from beyond the grave in the next installment. The Lion and the Lamb will meet for the first time.

I hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter. Scorpiofreak said that it would be a good idea for me to work on Jack's characterization outside BioShock's gameplay and story, and I hope that I was able to do that. A big shout-out to her for proofreading this and helping me to improve upon it. Definteily recommend her fanfics. Have a good one, everyone, and happy writing!