Somehow, against all of the odds being stacked against them, his luck being more rotten than Rapture's corpse, and his karma being so bad that if he fell from slipping on ice he would think fair enough, he makes it up and back in one piece, and there is plenty of liquid nitrogen left in the tank. Hell, he'd even found some ammo lying right next to it. Can you say "stroke of incredible luck"? He makes sure the thing is fully functional before testing it out, heading back to the water bridge and spraying a small burst near the very edge of the chasm—close enough to matter but not close enough to actually freeze the pipe, as Sally had pointed out when he'd been accidentally about to. Now, the small section freezes with little hesitation, but of course because it has nothing to hold onto it crashes to the ground below, and they hear a faint shattering noise as it does. Oh well. At least they know the damn thing works. He wonders why this works and his Winter Blast doesn't—they have the same effects after all, and all the previous times he'd switched the two out for each other he'd gotten the same results. Does it really matter? Well...yes, actually, this time it does. He snaps himself out of his musings before Sally can, and turns to her.

"Hey, it works!" Sally cries joyfully, clapping her hands together and startling him out of his musing—again. "We can go now, right?"

"Alright, it works, but the ice might break if we both try to cross at the same time. It probably won't hold both our weights. But, don't worry, I've got an idea. Stand behind me."

Sally has to crane her neck yet again to look at her partner, stepping back a bit so she can actually see his face. She gives him a worried look, glancing back at the bridge and chewing her lip. "We can still cross though, right?"

"If my plan works, yes. So here is the plan: I'm going to freeze as far as this thing will allow, and then I'm going to walk across the bridge and freeze the rest of my way through. Once I'm on the other side, then you'll follow me over. But don't run and don't rush, take your time and be slow—not too slow, though. If you're too fast, the different parts of ice won't be able to hold you and it'll crack, but if you're too slow, over a short period of time it will make the ice crack enough to shatter. You're lighter than I am, though, and you have near invulnerability, but also if you fall there's no way I'll be able to get to you. If I fall, I'm dead, and you're stranded on that side—and in Rapture—forever. So, we both have to be very careful, unless you want to die, which—hey—I won't judge."

Sally nods, biting her lip and frowning deeply and wrinkling her nose. Do all kids make such weird faces when their emotions are too much for them to handle? God, kids are strange. Between this one's weird facial expressions and her odd mannerisms, he doesn't quite know what to think of them as a whole. The child in question nudges him then, breaking him out of his thoughts, and frowns up at him. Man, she frowns a lot.

"Are we going?" she asks impatiently, hands on her hips as she sighs, irritated.

Jack glares back at the child with equal impatience and irritation (though perhaps with a tad more of both than strictly necessary) and rolls his eyes. Wordlessly, he hefts the large weapon in his hands and points it in front of him, calculating his next move. This is the tricky part—he has to make sure that he doesn't accidentally freeze the pipes that the water is coming from or else no more water and therefore no more bridge; but he also must pay attention to the fact that if it is not close enough to connect, then the ice will simply fall and shatter like they had seen before. He's not 100% sure how exactly to fix this problem, but he's proven himself to be a master at coming up with last second plans.

He takes note of the opposite end of the chasm, taking in the fairly short distance, the small amount of space on the other side, and—most importantly—the other water pipe, also broken and spouting its contents in their direction. Both spouts of water are just large enough to barely connect, crashing into each other and making an unholy sort of noise. The sound is only increased by the near emptiness of the space and the deep pit below—the depths of depravity have lovely acoustics, he thinks as a plan begins to formulate in his mind.

In one motion, he pulls the lever and pushes Sally farther back, noting that the girl had been about to touch it and making a mental note to warn her against such things. As they watch, the blue liquid spurts out and freezes the water solid, the noise akin to ice cracking and the groaning of metal—not the most pleasant of sounds. Sally grimaces whilst Jack merely presses his lips together his brow furrowing in discomfort. Finally, a good five or six feet of ice has formed, enough for Jack to walk about halfway through. He steps back and admires his handiwork, nodding to himself and letting a sort of half smile crawl on his face.

The first water burst has been completely frozen, leaving the second rushing to fill the space that it had occupied but falling quite short. Instead of against the opposing water pipe, the end of this watery arc falls into the darkness below, and as he listens he can faintly hear it as it crashes to the ground—perhaps if they had an eternity to wait they could simply wait for the water to fill to the top and swim across, but he's pretty sure that there is not nearly enough water in there for that. Besides, this should work just fine. He places a tentative step on the newly formed ice, finally shifting his weight onto the half-bridge and immediately backtracking when after a few seconds the ice cracks underneath him and Sally screams from behind.

"Mr. Bubbles," she gasps, reaching out to him though she is far from the edge and her arms are too short to even come close to reaching. Jack turns back sharply in surprise at the name, but it appears that the girl doesn't realize what she's just said, too caught up with Jack's apparent doom to care. Well, you and me both, Sister.

He turns his attention from her back down at the ice—and sure enough, there is a visible crack glaring up at him, shallow and small but a grim warning of what is to come should he lose caution for a second. He grimaces.

"It's like I said—it'll barely hold me, and it sure as shit won't hold the both of us combined. I'm gonna go across in a moment, but first I want to see if you have better luck than I do. Just step on the ice for a moment or two, then come back—don't head out too far. Okay?"

Sally doesn't answer, not verbally, but she doesn't need to—she backs away a bit and looks up at Jack again, her face a mix of apprehension and fear, so reluctant is she to depart from the one person that doesn't seem like they want to kill her since becoming a Sister. She looks back at the ice bridge and tentatively takes a step forward—it's not much, but it's a start, and he'll take what he can get with her. As she takes her first couple of steps onto the bridge he waits for the sound of cracking ice and impending doom, but it doesn't come—as she strays farther and farther away he resists the urge to call her back, instead waiting with bated breath as she almost crosses over to the second pipe. He makes a quick whistle, and she starts, turning to him, but he tries for a reassuring smile and a wave towards himself to beckon her back. She nearly scurries, almost slipping on the ice more than once. Once she's safely back on this side and she's clutching at his sweater sleeve once more, he decides that he needs to make a decision.

On the one hand, the ice clearly favors Sally, so it makes sense to send her over first and then he follows. Simple enough in theory, but if he's not mistaken, there are only two ways out, and unless he's wrong he's pretty sure your average splicer doesn't know how to use a bathysphere or any elevators. Which, of course, means that the splicer from earlier is still probably hanging around somewhere, by now no doubt aware of his and Sally's presence—in fact, he's probably waiting up in the rafters right now, waiting for his opportunity to snatch the girl and gut her. Well, fuck that, then. After all the trouble he's gone through for her—to protect her and to keep her on his side—plus the fact that he still intends to use their partnership to its full advantage—there's no way in hell he's giving her up without a fight, or at all. But, he realizes with a twinge of horror as he gazes at the ice bridge (which is already starting to melt and crack a bit), if he wants them both to get out of here alive, then he doesn't really have a choice. He's going to have to let her go first and hope for the best. He looks down at his side, and then turns and surveys the area to find her. She's standing by the gate, Air Grabber in hand, and holding it up to (presumably, though he has no idea why) try and catch the magnetic field again.

"What are you doing?"

"If we can get back up, we can just go back the way we came and find another way through." At his slightly confused expression, she elaborates, continuing her odd little dance as she jumps and twirls around to catch the field. She nearly topples over more than once considering the fairly weighted item in her hands, but she manages. "This area is...broken. Like the other place. We can't get through. The ice doesn't like me, and I don't think it likes you either. No way past, Mister Jack—gotta go back." She shakes her head and turns her attention back to her fruitless task, though of course she doesn't realize it's all in vain. Jack is probably going to tell her, at some point, once he gets done marveling at how completely unnerving that last bit was—the ice doesn't like me...Jesus, no wonder so many horror movies have kids as the antagonists, the creepy motherfuckers—but of course she's right. He's not telling her that last part though.

"No way back," he tells her, grabbing the Air Grabber and frowning as he tries to find a place for it. "The ice bridge will have to do—the best we can hope for is that it holds you and it collapses behind me, and then there's really no way back. This department store more than likely has more than just one exit and entrance, so it's not that big of a loss especially considering where we came from. Come on, then…" He nudges her away from the gate, motioning towards the ice, and for once keeling down to be at her eye level.

"Alright, listen. You're going to have to go over first, because you're smaller and far lighter than I am. The ice won't be under as much pressure with a six year old little kid running across it. It'll probably break as soon as I go over, considering I'm bigger and heavier, so I'm going to have to be fast and run across it. Stupid and dangerous, I know. Jealous?" He wiggles his eyebrows for dramatic effect, though he doesn't expect it to have any effect—but he's both surprised and pleased when it gets a small giggle from her. He smiles as well, just a bit, and continues, still just as serious. "Once we cross there's no going back. You got that?"

Sally contemplates this for a moment, her brow furrowing deeply in concentration before she looks up at him and nods. Slowly, she makes her way towards the ice again, and this time she doesn't look hesitantly back at Jack every five steps, which he counts as a solid win. She takes quick but careful steps across the ice, and though she almost slips a few times, she manages to make it to the end, where she picks up the pace and nearly runs off the ice before it can collapse beneath her. Only then does she finally turn back to Jack and give him a combined big grin and thumbs up, which damnit if he doesn't find that at least a little adorable. He nods once at her, giving her a thumbs up of his own in return, and mentally prepares himself for one of the stupidest things he's ever done in his relatively short life.

"Okay, okay. You can do this. You killed one of the wealthiest tycoons in America, battled big metal men and drug-addicted freaks with superpowers, and you haven't died yet. You can do this." He takes a deep breath, then, and quickly takes one step forward before he can change his own mind. A loud crack emits from the ice, and Jack just barely has time to retract his foot before the section crumbles into the dark pit below. "Fuuuuck."

"Mister Jack, are you alright?" Sally calls, and he can just make out the concerned expression on her face from here. No, he wants to yell back, I'm actually about to die, and this is not how I wanted to go, so I'm actually feeling kinda sucky right now. But there's no point in lowering the kid's moral, and so he simply plasters on a fake smile and throws up a thumbs up, "I'm fine. Just a little accident." I hope.

He tries again, making sure this time not to put all of his weight onto his foot, and though a noticeable crack appears underfoot, it doesn't break, which Jack is going to count as a win. He moves on before he or the ice can change either of their minds, and only by being quick on his feet and careful where he steps does he manage to make it to the other side to reunite with Sally, with only a few sections of the ice completely gone. "Thank God," he says, resting his hands on his knees as he looks back. Yeah, there's definitely no way they're getting back over there, even if they wanted to. And they sure as shit don't. He turns to Sally, who holds up her hand for a victory high-five. He obliges her, and finds himself slightly surprised when he finds he actually kinda means it.

"Can we get into the store now?" she asks, rather impatiently. She looks meaningfully towards the elevator, and up at the rafters where their splicer friend is no doubt still hanging about, waiting for his opportunity to strike. He grabs her arm and pushes her behind him protectively as he straightens, and nods.

"Yup. Let's go. Remember, stick close."

"Right. Thanks for telling me, I definitely didn't get it the first thirty times you said it."

"Okay, first of all, that's an exaggeration, it was only five; and second, shut up and stop sassing me."

"Stop being so easy to sass."

"What did I just say?"


"Well, this isn't creepy at all."

Nope. Definitely not. The immediate smell of sulphur and gasoline definitely doesn't put him on edge, the openness of the area and complete lack of enemies or noise definitely doesn't have him immediately reaching for his weapon, Sally's whimpering behind him definitely doesn't have him simultaneously reaching for her, and that nagging dread in the pit of his stomach saying bad bad bad over and over again most definitely does not make him almost want to try his chances with the ice bridge again. He takes a few deep breaths, reaffirms his hold on Sally, and steps out of the elevator.

Sally tugs on his hand, still whimpering. He really wishes she'd stop; it's making him nervous. "What is it, kid?"

"Don't like it here," she murmurs, quiet; and then, louder, "It doesn't feel right here. I dunno why, but I don't like it."

"That would be the lack of noise or people, m'dear. But fret not—I'm sure they'll turn up sometime, and God help us when they do. For now—well, you already know the drill."

"Stick close, stay out of the way, don't make a sound," she repeats, clutching his hand tighter. Her eyes dart around cautiously, scanning the area as her brow furrows anxiously.

Jack follows suit, noting almost immediately the large sign looming in the distance—TO THE TRAM, it reads, but Jack doesn't bother feeling hopeful as it's probably just another dead end, one way or another. The mannequins catch his attention next, their lifeless but likelife frames dotting the landscape—either positioned neatly in some caricature of a long-destroyed display or strewn about the place carelessly, as if they were thrown against the various counters lining the sides of the room. He notes, again, the quietness, the stillness of the place getting on his nerves, and he flicks the safety off his gun as he begins to move forward. The skittering of tiny feet catches his attention—for a brief, horrifying moment he fears it may be another Little Sister—but no, it's just a couple of rats. He completes shooting one or two but figures they aren't worth the waste of ammunition.

Aside from all of that, there really isn't much to look at here. He contemplates checking behind the counters to see if there's any supplies they can use, and finally figures 'to hell with it.' Sally has stopped her whimpering beside him, but he can still feel the uneasiness radiate off of her in waves. He gives her tiny hand a reassuring squeeze, and leads her to the counter on the right. They don't find much there, as expected, except for some snack bars that are long expired and some cash in the registers. Not much, but every little bit counts, after all. They repeat this a couple of times, but when the next two searches turn out to be almost completely useless, Jack abandons the endeavor.

They continue through the area, endlessly cautious about the unnerving calmness of the atmosphere. Sally remains on edge, alternating between clawing at Jack's hand or squeezing his fingers as hard as she can. He tries his best to ignore it as they make their way to the tram, because hey, when you're backed into a metaphorical corner you have to explore all the options, even the ones you know will lead to a dead end. As they're approaching the sign, Jack swears he hears the faint ding of the elevator chime behind them, but refrains from looking back, figuring it's probably just a figment of his paranoia.

What most certainly isn't is the deep chasm impeding their progress, the uproarious cacophony of burst water pipes crashing against each other, forming a liquid bridge almost identical to the one they had just overcome. Jack swears loudly upon seeing it, using about half the words in his vulgar vocabulary before Sally kicks his leg to get his attention. He ignores her for the most part, far too furious to care anything about what some little brat thinks, but he does stop his bitching for a good five seconds to think.

"You. Are. Joking. Are you for real? What the hell did I ever do to you? Why is this happening to me? Why can't something go right, just for once?! Is that too much to ask? Huh? Answer me, you pathetic piece of—" he sighs, frustrated, and honest-to-God stomps his foot at the edge of the crevice. He scowls deeply at it, preparing to scream his frustrations at it again, when Sally tugs on his hand.

"Mister Jack, why are you upset? We still have the…" she fumbles for a few moments, trying and failing to remember the name of the device that had saved their asses last time. "Uhm. The ice machine, we still have it, don't we? Can't we just make more ice?"

"We do," he amends, after a moment of his own. He had left the device in question back at the first ice bridge, figuring he didn't need the added weight and just relying on pure dumb luck that he wouldn't need it again. You'd think with all of his hopes and dreams riding on him, Fontaine would have programmed him with some better smarts and far more common sense. As it is, it doesn't really matter anyways—the thing had been almost empty, and he doubts he'd find any liquid nitrogen here. Sure, it's a department store, but from the looks of it they're nearest to the clothing section, and that sure as shit won't have what they need. He sighs in frustration and self-hatred, turning to Sally with what he hopes is a reassuring smile but in reality is probably more of a grimace.

"Okay, so here's the thing: I may or may not have...how to say this. I left it behind before we got on the elevator. It was out of juice anyways, so it wouldn't have done much good besides. We'll have to find another way, either around or, if worst comes to worst, across."

It's still a mystery to him how one's face can be so adorable and so grotesque at the same time, but every one of the Little Sisters has managed it. How he could have looked at their faces and seen monsters is something he's never going to forget or forgive. Sally is a constant reminder of that, though, and he's not getting rid of her anytime soon, so he figures he should just get used to it. He pushes down the odd squishy feeling in his chest as her ghoulish eyes, so empty and yet so full of emotion, gaze down at the floor, her cherub mouth pulled into a tight pout as she fills her cheeks with air, making them puff out and giving her an almost comical look. He'd ask what the hell she's doing, but in the short time he's known her he's learned it's best not to ask. When her face doesn't return to normal after the the second mark, he sighs and runs a hand over his face. "Kid."

"Sally." Her face quickly resumes its normal appearance to be quickly replaced with a look of annoyance as she turns her attention to him. "My name is Sally."

"I know, Sally. I know. Look, the tram is obviously a dead end, so we need to figure out another way to get...actually, wait," he says, more to himself that his cohort. "We need to find out where we're going first. What was the plan again? Erm...wait, okay, let me review that again. Step one: get out of the main part of Rapture. Done that. Step two: find a way out of here. Oh wow, that is a shit plan. Guess it's time to make a new one, then. Well, adapt and overcome—that's what I was born to do, right? Literally. Oh wait fuck, I remember now. We were gonna find a bathysphere and somehow haul it into the ocean and get the fuck outta here. But.." he turns back to the tram entrance, all the way on the other side of the chasm. He tilts his head thoughtfully, a new plan beginning to take shape in his mind.

"...Are you still talking to me?"

Yes, he hears her, and no, he is not, and neither does he answer her. Instead, he steps away from the edge of the divide, pacing back and forward with his fingers pressed to his temple. He realizes he's talking out loud right now, again, and that might be confusing for the six-probably-closer-to-seven-year-old standing a few feet away, still hopelessly trying to follow his train of thought along with him. "There's really no way we'd be able to haul an entire bathysphere into the ocean without equipment, and without anybody to maintain that equipment I doubt it still works. We don't have any reassurance that there are even any bathyspheres left, let alone that any of them are still functioning if so. If that tram is on a track, then it won't be shut down since Tenenbaum probably didn't have access to this part of Rapture, and even if she did there's no reason why or how she would or could predict we'd come here. Anyways. That bathysphere should be functioning, but a trip to where they're made might still prove useful if they have any info on how they're built. Maybe I could find a way to diverge its path somehow, take it off the track. Yeah...yeah, that's loads better that what we'd originally planned, innit Sally?" He doesn't turn to look at the girl for longer than a second, during which time she shrugs helplessly, completely lost at this point and just waiting for him to finish. Out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees her open her mouth, either in protest or to make a useless comment or to tell him that she doesn't understand, but in the end she says nothing and Jack doesn't inquire—fuck it, he's on a roll and he won't be stopped.

The rush of ideas and plans that are coming to him now are far too important to be delayed or ignored. He turns back to his pacing, absentmindedly noting the worrying sound of scrambling up in the rafters above. "Even if I can't take it off the track, if the department store proves to be a bust then we can always move on from here. That's a nice reassurance to have. But for now, we have to focus on getting over there in the first place. We need to find another chemical thrower and some more liquid nitrogen, or else an updated version of my Winter Blast. Oh, fuck," he swears, and stops in place as the realization hits him. "No, we'll have to do with the chemical thrower. It's sure as shit not the safest route, and if wherever that thing takes us turns out to be another dead end then we'll truly be fucked, but it's the best option. We'd need ADAM for the Plasmid, and I'm totally out—wait. Wait, no, that's a terrible idea," he dismisses the notion as quickly as it had come, not stopping to wonder when did 'I' become 'we'? and other stupid questions that didn't need answering in his mind. He finally stops talking then, his mind churning with the thousands of ways this could play out and the dozens of horrible fates that would await them both should they fail in their mission.

It's only when the kid—no, Sally, Sally—it's only when Sally speaks up, so hesitant yet determined, that he even remembers that he's not alone, and that someone is actually counting on him to A), not die and get them both out of here, and B), she's probably scared as fuck right now, being out of her element and without a Big Daddy to protect her, and the only thing she has left is him, and he should probably set a good example or something and at least pretend that everything is going to be alright, for her sake. He can do that. But, kids are a lot smarter than adults give them credit for, and he remembers that despite being only six, Sally is definitely no dummy. She may not know exactly what's going on at all times, but she's perceptive enough to know that something isn't right. Like right now.

"I have ADAM," Sally mentions, quietly, moving closer to him. Her gaze drifts up above, and it's then that he remembers that he'd heard a noise up there. So they weren't alone after all, and that wasn't just his own paranoia. He beckons her closer, lowering himself on his haunches so that he's eye-level with her before encouraging her to continue. "I don't know how much I have left, but if we really need it, I can find a…" she stops, struggling to find the word to match the image in her head. After a moment, she simply shakes her head. "I can give you some if we need it. Do we have to make more ice?"

"Probably." He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to look at Sally directly in the eyes. Those eyes still freak him out, if he's being totally honest, but this still has to be done. "Look, I really appreciate that, Sally. I know you don't want to, and to be honest I don't want it either. I've made a new plan, one that doesn't suck where it matters most, I promise."

To her credit, she at least pretends to look like she believes him. "Okay. So what is it?"

Jack thinks for a moment for the best way to explain this to her, and then decides fuck it and tells her what's what. Throughout, she does appear to be confused at times, but ultimately she nods when asked for approval and happily announces that this plan doesn't suck, though whether or not she can be taken for her word is still somewhat unclear as she still appears a bit lost. He thinks about explaining again, but he hears more metal clinking from up above, this time accompanied by some low muttering, and thinks you know what, if she has questions I'm sure she'll ask. Kid's not that stupid, after all. He grabs her arm and gently hauls her closer so that she's practically glued to his hip and waits for the sound to return, hand reaching for his pistol.

"Mister Jack?" Sally asks cautiously, noting the movement. "Are we in trouble?"

"Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt. Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt! Bring us the girl—" and so on and so forth, the husky, mutated voice of a demented once-human drifting down from the rafters above and sending an ominous chill down Jack's spine. Judging by the way Sally shifts uneasily beside him, she's felt it too. But she perks up once the—he's going to say it's a woman—speaks again, tilting her head in an odd manner not unlike the way she does when she's about to sass Jack.

"Pretty lady?" she murmurs, quietly, more to herself than Jack, but he hears it all the same; he brushes it off a tad uneasily, noting that that was the same name she had given her previous savior from Atlas' men, and the same woman who had put his life in Fontaine's hands. Perhaps that was simply a title, like mister or missus? He doesn't have time to ponder it further—the woman is moving again, whispering something else now, something about twins. Jack doesn't pay it mind, and looks to the rafters to see something scurrying up there, looking down at them through what he can only imagine is a look of pure rage. Why she doesn't just come down here and get it over with he has no idea. She seems perfectly content hissing threats down at them, circling around the same spot like a vulture while the sound of metal scraping against metal fills the damning silence. Sally shifts uneasily next to him, perhaps aware of what the sound means, or otherwise simply aware of the fact that Jack is on guard and Jack on guard is never a good thing. She grabs the hem of his sweater just in case.

They stand rigid for a few minutes more, listening to the deranged madwoman mutter and curse some more and move about above before the sound fades and the clinking of metal is distant, and he almost sighs with relief before thinking better of it. He looks down at Sally. "She's gone. We'd better get going. We need to find some more liquid nitrogen if we're ever to make it out. Come along."


Another hour or so of searching yields little to no results, though it does present Jack with a basic layout of the place and a few more rounds of ammo. He also finds a discarded shotgun, used by its previous owner to blow their own head off. Of course the damn thing's empty, but unless he's experiencing auditory hallucinations again he's pretty sure he's heard those creepy fucking clowns singing somewhere in the distance. He doesn't make it a point to look for any, seeing as he's stocked up well enough on his pistol ammo and he's still got a couple of EVE capsules left, but he does keep an eye out. Sally stays close by him for once, perhaps spooked into obedience by the sight of the splicer earlier. She still talks though, and offers her opinion with her usual six year old sass as Jack continues to talk out loud for the duration of the search.

"Do you think…?" she asks at one point, picking up an empty chocolate box and opening it. She frowns when she finds a pistol clip instead, which Jack almost immediately takes from her. She glares at him as she reached for another box.

"Not usually, no," he jokes when she doesn't finish her question, then sighs when she looks at him curiously. "Eh...nevermind. What are you thinking about?"

She shrugs after a moment, putting the lid back on this (empty) box and shoving it aside as she reaches for another. "Doesn't matter." She pries the lid off of this one and coos in delight as she comes up with a few slightly melted truffles. She begins to unwrap one while Jack debates stopping her. I mean, she's practically immortal, right? If a gunshot to the head won't kill her, surely food poisoning won't. Too late now, anyways—she's devoured it and is reaching for another. Jack suddenly remembers all the old and stale shit he's put in his body and decides that maybe old truffles aren't the worst thing she can eat. Still…he takes the box from her in an attempt to coax her out of silence. "Kid, is there something wrong?"

"You're wrong."

"Kid. Sally. Is there something you want to tell me? You seem troubled. If it really is nothing, then just say so, but don't lie to me."

"...Do you think she followed us? The...the bad lady. From up there." She cautiously points upwards, waving her index finger sideways to emphasis her point.

Jack looks as well, dread beginning to claw its way up through his chest as he expects to see the sulking, deformed figure leering down at them, but thankfully a quick glance around yields no results. "It doesn't look like it. I'd still be cautious, though."

Sally nods, seemingly satisfied with this answer, and continues rifling through candy boxes. Jack is not so easily placated, and as they exit the dilapidated little shop, he keeps a close eye on the ceiling.


"Mister Jack?"

He doesn't give any kind of response at first, too absorbed with studying the YOU ARE HERE map in front of him for another way around the burst pipe, but it's faded and etched out in places and the dried blood coating the lower left corner really isn't helping. He tries to follow possible paths with his finger, but if it's not a dead end, it's a place he knows is blocked by rubble or debris, and if it's not that then the next part is etched out with what looks like a meat hook not unlike the kind used by enemy splicers. He sighs in frustration as he comes to yet another dead end, and only when Sally tugs on his arm nervously does he remember he was asked something.

"Hm? What is it?"

He didn't mean it to sound so...blunt?—but she doesn't seem to mind, twiddling her thumbs as she stares off into the distance. "I just remembered something that can help us. The...um…" here she flexes her fingers and looks at him hopefully, praying that he gets it without her having to tell him. He shakes his head.

"What is it, Sally?"

"I hear her again," she says after a moment of debating her words. "I think she's watching us. From up there." After watching his expression turn from impatient disinterest to surprise hesitance, she takes a shaky breath and points upwards. "She's waiting."

He looks up, scanning the rafters for the deranged splicer and listening closely. After a few moments, he hears it too—low growling, the scraping of metal against metal, and the undeniable snarling heard in every horror movie ever. Jack finally spots it, crouching low with heated meat hooks in hand, bashing them against open air as if his skull was just in reach. He can't make out many features, seeing how far up she is, but he's at least forty percent certain that it's a she. Jack pulls Sally closer to him, and they both wait with baited breath as the figure moves around a bit, murmurs some more, and at one point bangs her hooks against the railing. Finally, she gets bored and scurries off, and Jack turns to the girl.

"Good eye," he comments, more shaken than he should be. He's faced worse, and he knows it. That thing has got nothing on Big Daddies or Fontaine. Still, it unsettles him greatly that he's seen that splicer before, and all she seems to want to do is observe. She'll want to square up eventually, they all do. He just has to be ready.

Sally merely nods, far more shaken than he. He remembers reading something in someone's notes, way back in the Little Wonders Educational Facility, about the girls being some sort of hypnotized—that was the only way they would cooperate. The scientists were largely unsure of what the girls saw the world as, but they knew that the only time the girls were broken out of their trance was in moments of extreme emotion, such as anger or fear. Jack wonders if she really knows what's going on here, or if she's still trapped in her own miniature version of Wonderland.

"What color is the floor?" Not a very intelligent first question, but he doubts any kind of compelling hypnosis has a blood-caked, tile-cracked floor.

Sally starts. "Huh?"

"The floor. Look down. What color do you see?"

Sally gives him a weird look, but the effect is lessened somewhat by the bottomless yellow eyes. "Gray," she finally declares, then pauses. "There are some weird stains on the floor, too. I don't know what they are. Ketchup?"

"I see," Jack says uneasily, the simple sentence telling him much already. "And what color is my sweater? Am I wearing one?"

She tilts her head to the side, frowning. After a moment she says, "I think your sweater used to be yellow, but it isn't anymore. It's all gross and slimy. Yuck." She makes a face at that, or tries to. It comes off more adorably disgruntled than disgusted. Well, he can't argue with that. He nods.

"Okay, final question: take a good look around, and tell me what you see. Just describe it as best you can."

"I don't think I can," Sally admits after a couple of seconds, frowning again. She takes a long look around for emphasis, making sure Jack is watching her bizarre expressions. She throws her arms wide. "I can't see anything! It's too dark in here. And it smells funny, and the floor looks weird and has ugly ketchup stains and there aren't any windows, so everything is dark...and...everything is dark. It's so dark and scary. I'm glad I'm with you, Mister Jack. I don't like it here."

She finishes by moving even closer to Jack and peering around his sweater to glare at some corpses slumped by the far wall. She doesn't say anything else, not to him at least—she mutters some more to herself about something or another, but Jack isn't listening. He's too taken aback at the wealth of information provided to him through those few simple answers, and he shuts her out for a moment as he takes the time to process it.

First, she isn't in fact hypnotised, at least not the way he'd read about. That's not necessarily a good thing—he's kind of been going through this whole unfortunate endeavor under the impression that at least his diminutive companion wasn't seeing things in as bad of a light as he was, but apparently she has, and she's a lot more innocent than he's ever been, so she's probably scarred for life now. What is this weird feeling gnawing at the pit of his stomach right now? Is that guilt? He can't tell. What about her situation does he have to feel guilty for? He didn't turn her into a Little Sister. He never intended to meet and bring her along on this insane jaunt. It's not his fault. Sure, he's got things he's not proud of, he's got skeletons in his proverbial closet. Who doesn't? But this...he's not responsible for this. For her.

Is he? He stores the question away for later, fully knowing that he'll never purposefully call on it again.

Back to the matter at hand. Second, that means that everything that's happened so far, and everything they've seen, she's fully experienced. She knows where she is, and while she may not have complete awareness, she knows more about what they're doing than Jack had thought. He just wonders why she didn't say something sooner. And that, he realizes, is another thing. How did this one break the hypnosis? He's fairly certain that the others were under the same spell, if their cries during battle and their idle chatter were any indication. He knows that the spell can be broken by healing the girls, Tenenbaum had told him as much, but he hasn't cured this girl yet. He wasn't planning to, either, not until they got to the surface. The benefits of a practically indestructible little girl far outweighed the cons—a lot of time would be saved if he didn't have to constantly move her out of the way of battle, constantly check her for wounds, and spend every second making sure she doesn't die, because she can't. It's as perfect of a situation that he's going to get in this entire thing. All that aside, though, she seems like a perfectly normal Little Sister, but with situational awareness. Perhaps being taken out of her element had jarred the hypnosis somehow. As far as he knows most Little Sisters don't have their Big Daddies going rogue on them and team up with a morally ambiguous...something to protect them instead. So maybe this girl is special after all, in a way. She's the first one he's saved. The first girl, and in fact the first person ever, he's felt a connection with, small and uncertain though it may be. The first real spark of hope he's had of getting out of here in a long while.

Sally is still mumbling, he realizes when he finally pulls himself out of his trance, and when he looks into her soulless yellow eyes, he realizes, and perhaps truly understands for the first time, that maybe they're not so soulless after all.