I'm still writing, albeit slowly. University's piling on the work, so I'm gonna be posting a lot more slowly these days.
Here's the next chapter of Zero Shock, guys. Enjoy and review, please~!
Dearest Sister,
I hope that this letter finds you well.
So much has happened these last two days!
It has been tiring, but I have good news: I finally performed a spell that did not explode!
The Springtime Familiar Summoning Ritual went smoothly, and I summoned a familiar.
I thought things had gone well, but...
Then everyone found out -what- who I had summoned.
It was a man; his name is Jack, and he's now my familiar.
There's runes and everything, just like on Mantieu and Chauncy.
About Jack: He is tall, and maybe the same age as you, and he's very quiet, but he is also so coarse.
It was like I was watching a barbarian in the body of a nobleman, seeing him walk and eat and fight.
Yes, the fight.
My familiar was challenged to a duel by Guiche da Gramont.
You remember that soldier who Eleanor was engaged to a few years back?
The younger brother of that man is Guiche.
He won. Jack won. Founder, it was scary to watch him fight.
Sister Eleanor fought like that too, hasn't she? With spells and hurling elements around.
But Jack is much more than that. He was so violent with his spells.
That man cut through a golem of bronze with fire magic.
He knows magic, sister! My familiar knows more magic than I do!
How am I supposed to live with that?
He can use square-class magic when I can't even manage a dot-class spell!
That man, was he sent here to curse me?
The pinkette stared at the parchment scroll, tapping her chin thoughtfully with the blunted tip of her quill. Slowly and carefully, the shaft of white goose-feather dipped into the inkwell as she scratched out a few more letters, printing in her flowing handwriting the words 'Yours lovingly,' before signing off with a tired and long drawn-out sigh.
Louise.
"That familiar..." She grumbled, carefully reaching into a pouch of dry sand. The ink was yet to dry, and the fine powder would help that drying further along. Sprinkling the soft brown sand over the paper, she left it for a while as she undressed and changed for bed. Properly prepared to sleep, she grudgingly returned to the sand-covered paper. Scraping most of the sand off, she dabbed the paper with a cloth to remove the remainder of the powder, then folded it neatly into a parchment envelope. Tying it with a ribbon, Louise slipped on a small ring with her family's coat-of-arms on it, and a wax seal was pressed onto the back of the letter, stamping it with her family's crest, a manticore rampant, with a wand-sword held in its beak.
Finished, Louise yawned as she glanced outside. Well into the night, with the moons high in the sky, waxing until they were nearly whole. Full moons tomorrow... Louise observed as she slipped into her bed. The door was locked, since she assumed that he was now throwing his weight around and finding himself a more comfortable place to stay...
Well, that was what she'd do, anyway.
He had slept in a corner last night. In the shadow of a lowly third-daughter's table, the man who had seen the headmaster of the Tristain Academy of Magic all but bow down to him had slept in a dusty dormitory corner. In his clothes, with his back against the wall and his weapon in his lap, the man who – in her society – would have settled for no less than a four-poster bed.
Like the one that she had slept on...
Was he really royalty?
Magic power was the ruling measure in Tristain. A person's magical power was a reliable method of finding out a rough measure of their rank in society. The families in the lower end of the scale often had weak magical strength – a triangle class mage would be considered a prodigy within the family, and destined to influence the house's affairs greatly, were they not entitled to the right of the firstborn. They worked jobs that a skilled commoner could replicate, like how forming swords with Earth magic was just as repeatable with steel, heat and hammer.
Conversely, the much more powerful families – both in magic and monetary influence – were often used to seeing square class mages in their ranks, and performed roles that were more fit for their station as the ruling class of nobles; they were leaders, both military and political, were often at the forefront of any conflicts concerning the country as a whole, and for the most part feared and respected as the epitome of human ability. The royalty were above even that, and it was a rare generation indeed that the king or queen of Tristain was not a square class mage or better.
Jack, however... just what was he?
Was he her familiar? Or was she just kidding herself when she thought that Jack would submit to her will? Even during their first meeting, she could feel his overpowering presence. She had thought it only to be the summoning ritual's afterwash of magic, now Louise was beginning to double-check her emotions.
Questions rolled back and forth like waves in the sea, lapping on the shores of her consciousness as she tried to puzzle out the young man that had become her familiar – or was she now his unwitting servant? Louise grumbled and growled, her pillow alternating between being close hugged and then being pushed away as she searched for answers that would not come to her. Even when she did find answers to some questions, the young girl only found herself with more questions to answer the answers. This was getting ridiculous, fast.
Louise spent an hour wondering, and seemed to find herself only with more questions than she had started with.
= The Sanctuary, near Fontaine Futuristics =
"Where is Daddy?"
A question that had been asked almost a thousand times, every time the Little Sisters had seen someone who had somehow or another earned the trust of Rapture's children. A good gauge of how favored you were in Jack Ryan's world was to be around him when the younger girls were present, and then to see how they reacted to you afterwards.
The fact that you were even on speaking terms with one was quiet the indicator in the first place, actually.
Sinclair found himself in front of the Little Sisters Orphanage this day, and now was looking at his own passkey as he slotted the punched metal card into the reader. It clicked, and opened. Ah, good ol' Argus Securities.
Sliding the bulkhead aside, he was assaulted with bright colors and open doors – something that was almost non-existent during Fontaine's dominion over the facility – and soon Sinclair was rubbing his eyes as his gaze drifted over brightly rendered pipes, people and crude caricatures of Big Daddies and other prominent figures from the life of the average Little Sister,
He was surprised to also see Tenenbaum, Salvatore, and a gaggle of splicers that he did not recognize by name (but had seen around often enough to identify) scrawled onto the walls.
"Hey, hey mister! Lily asked you... where is Daddy?"
Oh boy. The Big Daddies were starting to notice, now, and were plodding over to him. Round eye holes bored into him with their yellow gaze.
"Daddy is away, girls." Sinclair tried to reassure them. He wondered if this was how every nanny felt when they were asked the same question. Or a single mother, for that matter. "I suspect that he is very busy at the moment."
= Tristain Academy Walls =
He wondered if there was anything to do here.
Jack walked the hallways once more, noting the lack of people wandering around this night. No Guiche, no... well, anyone. Servants were glimpsed, darting here and there, but they were more hurried now, rushed when he had last seen them. He paid that some mind, wondering if the night before was more relaxed than tonight.
A random thought crossed his mind as a familiar looking black-haired maid bustled through a door, triggering a cascade of questions and answers. The night was young, but it was already empty of anything more than the Splicer and the mice in the corners of the room. Events recently had caused the school to go into full panic, namely because of a certain element shooting berserker firing off shafts of fire that cut through stone like the cliched hot knife through butter.
Jack sighed at his conclusion; this was probably his fault that everyone was suddenly afraid to go out into the night.
Then again, perhaps that was a good thing. Fear would mean that he – for the most part – would be left alone by the people who would do him harm. Such a strategy had (unintentionally) served him well during those first few weeks after the death of Atlas/Fontaine and Andrew Ryan.
Jack adjusted his sleeves a little, idly, as he made his way back to Louise's room.
= Louise's Room =
Sunlight streamed in, marking the beginning of the third day of Louise Valliere's cohabitation with Jack.
Moments later, she was screaming.
Jack easily ducked underneath the thrown pillow, arching an eyebrow curiously in Louise's direction as he stepped aside the second pillow. He was aware of this 'pillow fighting' that the Little Sisters were fond of engaging in, despite his concerns about them fighting amongst each other. It was supposed to be a 'fun' thing to do, something that was purely recreational rather than life-or-death. So why was Louise so... well, upset?
He guessed that this wasn't pillow fighting, then.
"Y-you? Why are you still here!" Louise accused, shooting up and out of her bed as Jack stood up and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
"Huh?"
"Don't play dumb with me!" She screeched. "You... you..."
"Louise?" Concern, now, lacing his voice.
"You... answer my question! Why are you still here?"
Jack palmed his face. "Because you are."
"Wh-" She blinked, catching herself on the knife edge between tears of hysteria and explosive rage. Once, twice, three times, she blinked before stepping back from him. His gaze was locked to hers, steely eyes piercing through her facade of anger. She was... relieved? Why did she feel that when he watched her? Louise stepped back.
"I... I..."
Again, her brain began to actually think. He was probably a noble of higher rank than her. Now that she knew that, treating him like she had before would have been... well, inappropriate. But he was her familiar! She knew that because of the contract and the familiar runes and everything! However... however... Louise's knees hit the edge of her bed, and she softly fell onto her backside as she melted into the duvet.
"Uh... I..." Flustered, Louise backed up a step, her gaze falling away from anger and more into embarrassment as she tried to level her voice. "Its just... I..."
Like a broken record, Louise managed to stammer out a few more 'I's before falling silent. Just how was she supposed to act around him? Was... who...
"Louise." Jack's hand fell down on her shoulder, not roughly, but quickly enough that she felt a jolt of surprise shock through her body. She flinched away, her breathing quickening, eyes snapping up from the floor into his.
"What's wrong?"
She blinked, trying to salvage control of the situation, refusing to let herself behave so indecently. Louise fell back to her more demanding self, one that had trampled aside the will of servants and her father alike. "You... just who are you!"
"Jack."
"Auuugh! Not that again!" Louise slapped away his hand, then pointed a finger at his face accusingly. "Shooting fire like that, freezing those golems. All with just a snap of your finger!"
"Plasmids?"
"Yes, your 'plasmids'!" Louise snarled. Her anger was building up now, as she jumped – practically leaped – off the bed and glared up at Jack in a way that was more adorable than it was threatening. "What kind of a spell were they! You don't even speak any incantations, and I'm pretty sure you don't use that 'wrench' of yours as a foci!" Her face was getting closer now as Louise gestured wildly to emphasize her arguments. She raged and fumed, her face returning to the rosy red that indicated both embarrassment and rage, though now it was the latter. "No, you go ahead and break all the magical laws that I've spent years trying to follow, and trample all over them! You just wave your hands around and then woosh! Something gets set on fire! Or gets frozen in place! OR YOU SHOOT FOUNDER-DAMNED BEES OUT OF YOUR FINGERS! Just how do you do that sort of thing? Who... no, what are you!"
"I know you're Jack," She interrupted, "but what are you!"
"Splicer." He answered, almost immediately. "Jack." There were many things that described Jack of Rapture, but those were the most common (for him. Plenty of nicknames were abound in Rapture, but Jack was what he was most comfortable with.)
"Can. You. Just. Stop. It. With. The. One. Word. Sentences!" She ground out, snatching up her wand and lifting it up to point it at the man's face. She took a deep breath an-
Jack's scarred hand wrapped around hers, his fingers closing around the wand as he snatched it out of her hands with a sharp yank then placed it on the table behind him in one smooth motion.
"No." He warned. His voice was firm. Commanding. Louise's knees immediately began to tremble as Jack towered over her.
Louise's brain made a little snapping sound. "You... you..."
= Location Unknown=
Fluttering wings, a bird landed.
The pigeon's message was taken.
Hushed voices filled the room as the cipher was cracked.
One voice in particular sounded above the other hooded figures.
"Well fuck."
Parchment met fire as robes hustled across the floor.
= Louise's Room=
The door was thrown open, and Kirche appeared, with Tabitha in tow.
"Good morning~" She singsonged, the little musical note all but visible as she surveyed the scene. As usual, the tall and busty young woman was chirpy and glowing with her usual inner fire. Jack quickly appraised her as she burst into the room; her hair and face were as he had remembered before, but the buttons on the front of her shirt were undone, and her cloak was thrown back to expose more of her shapely torso and hips. Tabitha, in contrast, had the bulky cloth covering most of her body, in an almost protective fashion, as she held the staff loosely behind her back. The shorter of the two bowed her head slightly in greeting, then retreated back into the book that occupied her other hand. She used a corner of the book to push up her glasses, then sat down neatly on a stool near a corner that had been recently used by Jack to sleep in.
"Morning." Jack waved in greeting as he held Louise's wand up high above her reach. She decided to jump up, to try and snatch her foci back, an action which Jack simply sidestepped.
"Give it back! Give it back, I say!" The pinkette whined, already reduced to a childish mewling in between her desperate leaps to get at her wand.
Kirche, for once, was struck dumb by the scene before her.
She blinked a few times as Louise latched onto Jack's sweater and tried to pull him down or climb up (she couldn't tell which one was the pinkette's intention). The man stoically stepped back, dislodging the girl. She tried it again, only to miss her leap and instead end up clinging to his elbow, hanging off it. Louise was either very light or Jack was very strong (Kirche was more partial to the latter option), for him to not even budge like that with the added weight of the pink-haired girl.
Louise kicked at his knees, wriggling around like an adorable little monkey. "GIVE IT BACK!"
It was too much. The redhead burst into a laughing fit, leaning against the door for support as Tabitha facebooked with her little novel.
The Germanian pointed at Louise, after reducing her laughter down to mere giggles. "Oh my, this noisy in the morning already? And so violent, too. You two sure are going through this relationship fast. Fighting as well... hmm, did you miss out on the good bits and skip to the breaking-up part?"
"Kirche." Jack sighed, in part warningly as Kirche pressed fingers delicately to her lips and giggled.
"I'm sorry, I can't resist a jab while Louise is all cute and sniffly like this" Crossing the room, she stood beside the two, and the buxom redhead's arms wrapped around the pinkette, eliciting a series of half-heard noises that sounded suspiciously like grievous threats. The Germanian girl's response was simply to laugh and hug Louise even tighter to her ample chest. "You know, for a Valliere you're very huggable."
"Kirche." Jack repeated. "Let go."
"No."
And so, the clock tower struck ten, only partially masking the scream of Louise Valliere.
= Olympus=
"Augustus Sinclair here. Alright, so we have a hole. And Jack Ryan has disappeared into that hole. We have a rough location of where that hole opened, but we have no idea where that hole goes to, or if we open a hole in that location that it would lead to the same place."
Sinclair took a deep breath. "What do we know about these kinds of holes? How are they opened and can we find him? That's what we're going to find out. You are all gathered here as members of 'Project Orpheus'. Those familiar with Greek mythology will understand why. Many think Jack Ryan dead. We're going to bring him back, whatever method we have to use."
His gaze swept across the room, his eyes hard and calculating. Augustus Sinclair rarely if ever spoke like this, and his usual character of a laid back businessman was gone, replaced – perhaps masked over – by the calculating judge that was now standing before the group of three dozen or so scientists. "If you're staying - and I say to you now that there's a door right behind you if you want out and back into the halls - you're going to build us a machine or somehow open that portal and get Jack Ryan back to us."
He placed both his hands on the table, staring at the mahogany for a moment, before he sucked in another breath. "You're the best, as far as I can gather, and you've all got a reason to have a vested interest in seeing Jack back, because we ain't going to be around long if we can't get him home. So I hope you won't disappoint, since we'll be paying you a lot – both in money and in any supplies you might need for your homes and new communities – to bring a man back from wherever he's gone off to. I have a large check here waiting for each of you guys if Ol' Sally upstairs gets to shake hands with Jack Ryan, so if you don't mind, lets get started."
Sinclair stepped aside as a slideshow came up, the young woman at the projector slipping the first slide into place. It was a picture of the portal that Jack had disappeared into. There were a few outcries of disbelief and others of wonderment. "Applied Quantum Science is your field, so I'm not going to go into exposition about why or how we think Jack's gone. You've got all we have; tapes and copies of tapes of what we know happened, since he's very kindly disappeared to us on camera. That's the critical frame, though; there's a pattern around the edge, and we think that might have something to do with whatever took Jack."
"And what do you suppose we do about it?" Asked one. "Make an impossible machine from a box of scraps? Some of us are living in places that might as well be caves, Sinclair, we can't work miracles in there! We need proper labs – materials, experimental facilities..."
The businessman cut him off with a gesture, the simple raised palm asking for peace. "We've got access to any lab that would be relevant to this project, and we've got a lot of people backing us up as manual labor, suppliers for any materials you may need, engineers to build anything that pops up, and we've been given access to Big Daddies to keep us safe. Tenenbaum's gone full steam with this project, and she ain't going about it half-assed either."
"She's handed us Fontaine's labs on a silver platter, as well as most of the surrounding area. I expect everyone involved in the project to move into the new living quarters being built for us there, if you have family they're welcome to come along too, we've got plenty of room. Mind you, we're not forcing you into that place, but remember that there's at least a dozen Big Daddies being assigned to patrol and protect 'Hestia Homes', so its going to be as safe as you can be around here. Tenenbaum and her people aren't usually so generous with this kind of thing, so I'd say take the chance while its there."
= Forest, outside of Tristain Academy=
"Show me what you can do."
"What." No question mark. It was just a flat statement on Jack's part. The two stood outside of the Tristain Academy, which was hidden from view by a grassy knoll. They were on a similarly grassy dip in the ground, fenced in by a forest on one side, with its many and varied trees.
"You're... my familiar." Louise all but shouted, stomping her foot down with the confidence of a man on the wrong end of a Big Daddy's drill. "I... I want to know what you're capable of! J-just... just show me what you have already!"
"Why?" Jack queried.
"I just answered that! You're my familiar!"
"How?"
"How do I know that?" Louise guessed.
Jack nodded.
"B-because... because of the runes! On your left hand!" She pointed them out. Jack hitched up his sleeve, looking past the tattooed chains on his wrist to inspect the back of his palm, confirming her story again. A series of lines and dots, interconnected in a way that reminded him of letters and symbols. They were blocky and for the most part square, not rounded like the texts that he had seen around Rapture, but more... well, industrial. Louise took this opportunity to continue on with her 'you are my familiar' argument. "A familiar has those runes etched onto them when they are contracted by a mage, an I'm the only person who kissed you and that's part of the contract so... so... ah..."
Louise turned a bright red as she glanced away from Jack, who simply cocked his head to one side as the girl slowly turned back to face him again.
"A-anyway... also, a familiar can share their senses with their contracted mage, and the other way around works of course, since you sometimes need to... well, never mind! Look, let me show you!"
Picking up her wand, Louise made an elaborate motion in miniature, before whispering to herself, "I see, I hear."
Jack's brain throbbed for a second, and Louise winced in sympathetic synchronization as they both dropped to one knee. Vision swimming, Jack looked up to see himself and Louise, almost side by side but not quite. Their images in his sight were overlapping... It was almost like double vision, his eyes seeing two things at once. He closed his eyes, shutting off the headache-inducing imagery.
"Jack?"
"Jack?"
And he was hearing an echo, too. It wasn't hard to guess that this was simply what he was hearing added to what Louise was hearing. And possibly a little delay before what she was hearing reached his ears. Jack shook his head, and opened one eye. Nope, that was 'Louise's' eye, and he could only see pitch darkness.
Switching eyes, Jack looked up to see Louise already reaching out for her dropped wand.
"Enough enough enough! Stop!"
"Enough enough enough! Stop!"
The double vision and the reverberated hearing stopped immediately as the empathic bond collapsed and fell into silence and darkness. It wasn't so much the pain as the sudden release of it that caused him to sag to the ground.
Jack wasn't seeing anything out of his right eye anymore. He blinked a few times as he regained his feet, planting his feet firmly on the ground to keep himself from toppling over again. Like the time when he and the Little Sisters had found themselves in an ice cream store, his head felt like it had been frozen, an ice cube inserted and then shaken around. It was called brain-freeze, wasn't it?
"Ugh."
"O-okay... I'm never doing that again." Louise muttered to herself. "Too... ow. Was that how you see the world? What were those little bars? That blue and the red one... And what in the Founder's name is an 'Incinerate'?"
"Plasmid." Jack answered, holding out his hand. Plasmids were often dormant until he called them up into 'idle' state. The same kind of action as drawing his guns, really. He pumped his arm, drawing back his sleeve further, as the skin on his arm set alight, catching on fire as he let it burn. Skin wrinkled, dried, then began to scar over as patches of his hand were crisped to still-living cinders.
"Louise." Jack called out, as Louise stumbled back from the sudden appearance of flame.
Holding up his hand, he let the pinkette examine the flame-wreathed digits, the burning skin and the bright orange flames.
"Incinerate." The splicer said, as if giving introductions between two friends.
"I... I see..." She reached out, as if making to touch the flames, but Jack yanked his hand back before she could touch it. He shook his head firmly in response to her pouting.
"Dangerous." He warned as he crouched down. Jack pressed his hand into the dewy grass, and there was a brief flash and a sizzle. Steam rose up from underneath his fingers as Jack drew his plasmid-wrapped hand back, revealing a scorched handprint on the grass. "Burns."
Louise gulped.
"Wh- what else?"
"Winter Blast." He murmured, pumping his fist again to cycle through to the freezing plasmid. His teeth clenched, his arm muscles spasmed. Spikes of ice burst out from underneath his skin, spittles of blood splashed across the frozen skin as the wounds froze in place. Louise yelped out loud, jumping back a meter – two? - as she tried to distance herself from the arm.
"That's just crazy! Why did you do that?" She looked at Jack in askance. "You're a ma- Splicer! You control the elements! I-isn't that painful?"
"Yes."
"And... and yet you still do that?"
"You asked."
"I... I didn't ask you to do that to yourself!"
"Plasmids." Jack repeated. "Showing you."
"But..."
"Pain." He tapped his wrist for this one. "Not hurt."
There was a key difference there, between something that involved pain, and something that hurt. Pain was simply a reaction to events that was around you; if something was in pain, then it required attention of some sort. Pain could be dismissed, it could be ignored, pushed away or channelled into a single purpose. Pain was a tool. It was sometimes a good thing; pain meant that the limb was still there, pain meant that whatever hurt would mend eventually. Jack knew that this didn't apply for everyone, but for him that was the meaning of pain.
Hurting, though, was something else entirely. It was never a good thing, where pain would carry that duality, hurt was never a good thing. It was a pain of the mind, not of the body. Hurt started in one's chest, near the heart. It – like a sickness – would spread throughout. A body, a family, a city. Hurt would kill as surely as a bullet, if slower and more insidiously. Hurt was what brought Andrew Ryan down tot he bottom of the sea. Hurt killed so many, and Jack was never tolerant of it.
"More?"
"Y-you have more?"
A nod.
"Insect Swarm."
Jack readied himself, pumped his fist and prepared to activate the plasmid as he turned around to Louise, who was suddenly grabbing his arm.
"NO!" She shouted, screamed. Force rippled out of her in an ever-widening circle. Jack recoiled from the sudden jolt that shocked through their surroundings, and stepped back to face Louise. She stammered a little, but managed to still herself long enough to explain the reasons for her shouting.
"No! I... I detest those... they... they were those bees you used on Guiche, right? N-no, I'd rather not see them again... I... uh..." Those holes that appeared on his arms, those... those thing were crawling all around his hand... like it was their beehive or something. "C-can you show me something else, perhaps? Something a little more... elegant?"
"Cyclone Trap." A rarely used, but still useful plasmid given the right conditions. He pumped his fist, and then snapped his fingers to summon a small fountain of air, swirling around like a miniature tornado. Jack moved it around, adjusted its size, then settled it on the ground in front of a tree, ready to use it on himself. He ran towards the miniature vortex of cloud-like swirls, and then suddenly found himself flung up high. Louise was again surprised as Jack shot straight up from a small swirl that she had thought was weak.
Instead, now her familiar was dangling precariously from a tree branch.
Which was now bending and close to breaking.
Jack was thinking that maybe this wasn't quite as well thought out as he had hoped.
"Jack! Oh you have to be kidding me..."
= Pigeon Loft=
Noon. The pigeon had arrived back in the coop, marked as it was by the copper carry case that it wore around one leg. It had a light load, so had flown back quickly. Or her handler was closer to home than she thought.
Her mind quickly processed the cypher, and she whispered the message quietly to herself as she tossed the parchment onto the flames.
"Test him. Break the vault."
Damn. She hated being a guinea pig.
= Forest=
"So... ah..." Louise flushed red as Jack picked himself out of the bush, twigs and leaves sticking to his woollen sweater and hair. The splicer seemed more bothered by the shrubbery than she would have imagined for such a figure. It was almost funny, watching him disentangle himself from the tangled mass of limbs – both human and plant.
"Grah!" Jack slipped, a curved branch snatching at his collar and pulling him back in when it was suddenly pulled taut by his movements.
Well... try to disentangle himself from the bush.
It was a bush after all, and just a bush. It wasn't like it had asked to be landed on, either. Tripping over a root, the man stumbled but recovered, and then ended up snaring himself on a low-hanging branch and getting knocked over.
"Honestly." Louise groaned. "Its almost like you haven't been in a forest be- oh." The pinkette facepalmed. "Underwater. Right."
Jack rolled himself onto his back, and then made his way up into becoming upright. "Yeah."
"So you weren't lying, then? About you being from the sea?"
A shake of the head.
"What was it like, down there?" Louise stepped forward, as Jack patted himself down, and delicately placed herself on a fallen trunk.
"Dark." Jack muttered. "Cold."
Tunnels stretched out before him. Dark, and cold.
"Was it always like that?"
Jack shook his head, pushing away the encroaching memories of Rapture.
"No." They changed it. They changed Rapture's status quo of ADAM, death and insanity. "I... helped."
"Helped to?" Louise prompted.
"Change Rapture."
"You... were you... what did you change?"
"War."
"You started a war!" The pinkette shouted, alarmed.
Jack shook his head. "Finished."
He had stopped a war?
"And... how long ago was that?"
"A..." Jack searched for the right word. "A year?"
"And... your family? You said yourself that you had family, right?"
A nod. "My... family."
His little girls. Their Big Daddy.
Their... Father?
Just like Andrew Ryan was yours.
Andrew Ryan. Jack had killed him with his bare hands – the golf club simply helped. The Cages at Apollo, those corpses... those still living, still breathing things that had once been human but were now just shapes in the bottom of a cage, lying in a pool of... the horrors of Fontaine's lab shot through his mind. His mind floated over the memories, the ghosts of the past. A broken body here, a failed experiment there. Parts, scattered all around. A glove here, with no arm attached to the hand inside. Targets, for test firings. Still tied to the posts where they had died.
Statues floated into his vision; not statues, but instead splicers, covered in plaster. Terrifyingly silent, they moved with eerie grace. Gene tonics absorbed sound, turned it into more kinetic energy; they were faster than anything he had ever fought before.
A grunt. His. Jack pressed palm to forehead, not in frustration but in pain this time.
He stumbled as he tried to restore his balance, fell to one knee as he continued to remember things that he had desperately wanted to forget about the underwater city that he was home to. Horrors of the past swam up, unbidden and unwanted. The shattered corpse of a Big Daddy floated before him, its globe-like helmet and back smashed in by the concrete that had rained upon it from above. In its arms, still alive and crying out was the thing that had caused its death: the Little Sister it had tried to protect.
Jack breathed out, snatched at the memory. A face? He didn't remember what she looked like then. Brown hair? Was it brown? Tied into a ponytail. With a ribbon made of a web-like seaweed. That girl. He had saved her, didn't he?
Didn't he?
"Are you my Daddy?"
Melissa?
He had taken from her. That slug. Right?
Jack tired to remember.
Melissa. Melissa was found in the Medical Wing. That was correct, wasn't it? She was there... was she?
"Jack?"
Jack pushed away the voice of Louise. Melissa was eight years old. He wasn't sure, but... that was how old she was, right? When he had pulled her screaming form from the embrace of the Big Daddy.
Right?
He tried to remember.
Her hair... her hair was...
"Jack!"
Louise's voice cut through his consciousness, and Jack briefly looked up at the girl before his body locked up, and the sensation of falling took over all else.