A/N: Congratulations… you have made it to Chapter 20. Thanks for sticking around this long : )
Also, I've pretty much gotten all the chapters written out. I have maybe five more to do, at most... I'm so excited, but I'm really trying to take my time and not screw it all up. If you're a reader from the first version of this story, you might remember a few specific chapters that took up a fair majority of the story... I've tried cutting most of those out.
Anyways, happy reading!
20
Sapphire's Abandoned Laboratory
There was a cold darkness all around Jack, penetrated only by the aching. He let out a sharp hiss of pain, grimacing as he remembered what happened. His eyes snapped open when he heard something loudly hit the floor beside him. A pile of books and papers was being formed about three feet away from him.
This drew Jack's attention to his leg, which wasn't very far away from the forming pile. His injured leg were being doctored. The two ADAM slugs that Holly and Jack had collected were slowly crawling across his skin. They were still wet, like they had been taken out of their water not too long ago. The injuries, which Jack was sure were once gaping and bleeding profusely - as suggested by the pool of blood that had gathered underneath him – were now closed, or in the process of being closed.
Jack's pant leg was torn to hell, and he was still missing his sweater, unfortunately. He at least still had both shoes on, which was a pleasant surprise for him.
The room Jack was in appeared to be one of the smaller offices in the dark hallway he and Holly had passed through earlier. A desk and some padded chairs hand been pushed out of the way to make room for Jack and the pile of books. The bucket of water that the slugs had been in was now on top of the desk. Though the room was fairly dark, there was some light was coming from the room full of tanks that was apparently just around the corner. There was enough light for Jack to see most of the room with a fair amount of ease.
Hurried footsteps approached the room, and Holly walked in, blocking out some of the light. Despite this, Jack could still make out the stack of books in her arms. She stopped when she saw Jack watching her, just as she was about to drop the books into the rest of the pile. "You're awake…!" She sounded relieved. She dropped the books and quickly kneeled on the other side of Jack. "I was really worried you weren't going to make it." Holly nodded towards the pile of books and papers. "Can you light that on fire? You need to get warmed up as soon as possible."
Jack lifted his hand, despite feeling it shaking, and tried to snap his fingers. As expected, his thumb slid numbly across his finger. He let out an irritated grunt and tried again. And again. And again. Frankly, Jack's fingers didn't have much feeling in them. All he accomplished was making himself look ridiculous, snapping repeatedly, leaning against a wall in sodden trouser and loafers, two undulating slugs crawling up and down his leg.
Holly let out a sharp breath of determination, gripping Jack's hand. "You need the warmth…" She muttered, almost like she wasn't really talking to Jack, as she resolutely tried to rub the feeling back into Jack's fingers. "These slugs can't keep you going forever." She pointed at the pile she had created. "Try it now."
Jack first wiggled his fingers, testing to see if he could actually feel them – or, at the very least, control them. He snapped his fingers. It was weak, but he could feel the EVE in his body reacting to his actions. It wasn't enough, though. It conjured barely a spark.
At this, Holly's shoulders slouched, and she reached for Jack's hand again. He pulled his hand out of her reach, snapping again, receiving the same result. Holly started to say something indignant that Jack didn't quite catch, but she was interrupted by a very loud and sudden fwooshing sound. Both of them flinched back as the books and papers were set alight.
Holly laughed triumphantly, getting to her feet. "Now I feel more comfortable looking for something we can eat… Stay here and get warmed up. I'll be back before you know it."
And with that, the girl was out the door. Jack struggled in an attempt to get to his feet, but felt his injured leg give out. The Ryan almost toppled straight into the pile of flames. He frowned to himself. He was going to offer to go with Holly, but he'd be more of a burden than a help, at this point. He hoped the leg injury was going to be able to be fixed with more ADAM.
The slugs began to shy away from the warmth of the flames, and Jack felt a sudden pang of realization. These slugs were clearly having enough trouble out of the water, but now they were placed beside something hot. One of them was trying to get away from the dry warmth so urgently that it seemed willing to fall off of Jack's leg.
Jack felt the need to help the disgusting, abhorrent creatures, despite their distasteful qualities. Picking them up, Jack scrunched his nose at the slimy feel of the slugs. It was something similar to what skinned chicken breasts might feel like if the surface were more striated. This slimy texture made the slugs harder to hold which made it difficult for Jack to get to his feet – a task in itself that's already proven extremely difficult at that point.
As Jack worked to get himself to his feet, using the wall behind him to lean against while slowly and carefully pushing himself to his feet without slipping, an agonizingly familiar voice came from the shadows beside him.
"Here," It said, and Jack felt a pair of hands grip his arm and pull him to his feet. "Allow me to be of some assistance…"
"Ah..!" Jack flinched away from the hands, staring wide-eyed into the flickering shadows. The fire provided more than enough light to show him that no one was standing there. A few more moments of inspection, plus a couple of tentative steps into the darker area of the office, led Jack to believe that his recent injuries and the sudden influx of ADAM may have been causing him to imagine things.
"Yes, I suppose that is quite a curious corner, isn't it?"
Jack whipped around, feeling a slight twinge of pain run up his leg when he put pressure on it. "You…" He hissed after processing what he was looking at.
The Ryan's favorite enigmas stood side-by-side near the desk that the bucket of water had been placed on. The two copper-headed twins with pale skin and emotionless eyes stood in place, watching Jack with the default expression of nothing.
"Hmm," The woman that Jack could only remember as Rosalind clasped her hands delicately in front of her, not taking her blue eyes off of Jack. "Now, I can't recall; was he referring to you that time, or me? It really all does blend together."
"No, I do believe that he was speaking to me, this time." The brother, Robert, also refused to look away from Jack. It was like they were both aware that he might start hurling fireballs at them any moment.
"Well, then I suppose that means he was speaking to me in our last meeting. Correct?"
"That makes much more sense… I do believe that is correct, then. My apologies."
"Not a problem in the slightest. I'm glad we've got that all figured out – we needn't have ourselves a confusing situation."
"Oh, I certainly agree."
Jack still hesitated to believe what he was seeing, though it was becoming evident that he was not hallucinating. He narrowed his eyes, slowly stepping towards the twins, trying not to put much pressure on his recovering leg. The copper haired siblings didn't move – they just watched as Jack slowly approached. And Jack didn't say anything. He just dropped the slugs in the water bucket once he reached the desk, and turned so that he was face-to-face with the twins.
"You look haggard." Rosalind pointed out bluntly. "Perhaps you should be resting?"
"Why are you two following us?" Jack growled, glazing over the sarcastic question. He was in no mood to dance around answers.
"Following you? We've no reason to follow you."
"Then why do I keep seeing you around every corner?" The Ryan demanded angrily. "And how did you know about the ADAM slugs?"
"I think a better question should be directed towards your friend, don't you think?" Robert didn't hesitate to answer. "How did she know what to do with them?"
"She's not stupid. She can put two and two together."
"On the ocean floor? In the face of danger?"
Jack thought about responding with something simple along the lines of 'sure,' but eyed the twins instead. It wasn't the fact that they had a point that bothered him – after all, a coincidence is a coincidence. It was the fact that they knew what happened that bothered Jack. As far as he knew, they had already disappeared. They would have had to have been rather close to a window for them to see Jack and Holly's encounter with Sapphire's Splicers. But Jack hadn't seen them at all.
Jack took yet another step forward, completely ignoring the pain in his leg. "Who the hell are you people…?" He tightly held his hands in fists. "Why are you following us?"
"We're not following you."
"If you want answers you deem fulfilling, perhaps you should ask questions we deem correct." Rosalind tagged on seamlessly, like she was reading it off a script.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Jack snapped impatiently. "Why are you two always avoiding answers?"
"We don't avoid answers. We look for and provide them… given the right situation."
A floodgate inside Jack that held back his vat of anger opened up. He was done playing these games. He just wanted answers, and he's tried to be civil, despite feeling that the two copper-haired twins have been doing nothing but lure him and Holly into traps. It seemed to him now that the only way that he might get a straight answer out of one of these two is if he forces it out of them. Jack flung himself at Robert, reaching for the lapels of the man's suit, with every intention of adjusting the copper-haired man's face if need be.
But, rather than snatching onto the man's lapels, Jack fell forward. There was no time to reconsider – he was already falling into the desk. He let out a loud cry, which was proliferated when he fell onto his injured leg, knocking the bucket of water and ADAM slugs off the desktop in an attempt to stop himself from hitting the ground. It landed on the other side of the desk with a loud, watery crashing noise.
"Missed," Rosalind annotated without skipping a beat.
Jack sucked in a shaky breath of air as the shooting pain in his leg started to ebb away, leaving a sore ache. He spun around onto the seat of his pants.
The twins were gone.
Running footsteps neared the doorway, and Holly sprang into the room. She had the spear gun in her hands, and she was loading it even as she entered. "What's wrong?" She asked urgently, scanning the room with the gun as she finished loading it. When her sights stopped on Jack, finding nothing else, she lowered the gun with a frown. "Are you OK?"
"I'm fine…" Jack mumbled, almost embarrassed to even be seen in his situation. He started to get up, using the desk beside him.
"Well, what happened?" Holly leaned the gun against the wall to help Jack to his feet.
"I'm not entirely sure, myself, actually…" The hardest part of explaining what happened would be wording it so that Jack didn't sound crazy, which would be a feat in itself. Once Jack was on his feet, Holly picked the slugs up off the ground, putting them back in the bucket. "It was those twins who showed us where the ADAM slugs were. They just… popped in for a little visit."
"What did they do – pick you up and throw you?" Holly set the bucket back on the desktop.
"I wanted some answers from them, but they weren't willing to give any. So I figured I'd have to do it the old fashioned way. I tried to get the brother and… it was like I fell through him."
Holly blinked, setting her hands on her hips. "They saved you, you know." She nodded to the spear gun. "They showed me where to find that. If they hadn't… well… you probably wouldn't be standing where you are, right now."
"They also drew us into an area we could be easily cornered in. And we were, if you'll remember."
"But we got the ADAM slugs, which literally saved your life. So that's two ways that they stopped your imminent death."
"Why are you defending them?"
Holly shrugged. "Why are you attacking them?"
"You don't find it suspicious that they keep turning up right as something is going, or is about to go, wrong?"
"I just know what I've seen." Holly's response came dismissively. She reached for something that was hanging from her utility belt, which she had to nearly empty before the duo had got suited up to walk the ocean floor – Jack also had to leave the mailbag that Wayne Coleman gave behind in order to properly fit the suit. "Here…" Holly handed the thing over to Jack, obviously wanting to move on. "… I found this in a locker. It should fit you."
It was a shirt. It had a small, black and blue logo stitched into one of the short sleeves; a simple blue S with an image of a black, silhouetted city – Rapture – in the background. It must have been what Sapphire was using as her branding before everything really fell apart. "Thanks…" He mumbled, quickly slipping it on. It was baggy enough that he could tuck the bottom of the shirt into his pants, still giving him more than enough room to move about.
Holly waited until Jack was settled to reach into one of her pouches. She pulled out a syringe full of a comforting, red liquid, offering it to Jack. "I also found this." She held it flat on her palm in front of her. "It should fix your leg right up. I think the slugs have given out all that they have, anyways."
Jack took the syringe, thanking her gruffly. As he injected the contents of the needle into a vein in his wrist, his thoughts turned to what those damn twins had said. With great reluctance, Jack casually asked "So… how did you know that throwing that ADAM slug would work with the Splicers?"
"Huh…? Oh." Holly busied herself by closing the pouch on her utility belt that she retrieved the syringe from. "I just wanted to distract them. It seemed really important to them, though. Do you think that's why you were attacked? You were holding a Plasmid."
"And I was hawked up on EVE…" Jack tested his leg, pleased to feel it cooperating with him. "It still doesn't explain why I wasn't just killed."
"Ulterior motives?"
"Those things were humans… once." That was the disturbing truth of it, too. Jack could only hope that, after being scared off by Holly and the spear gun of hers, the Splicers might just leave the duo alone – of course, that all depended on Sapphire's control over them. Rolling his ankle a couple times, reveling in the newly restored sensation of relief, Jack asked "So, what now?"
Holly took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, like she had to make a cruelly difficult choice. "Well… we could go back to the train station that we left our things in and rest up before heading straight to Sapphire… Or we could just rest up now and then head to her from here. It's up to you, though."
"Then let's go back."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Jack let out a sound that was a mixture between a scoff and a bitter laugh. "I have a funny feeling those things would be less than willing to let us go straight towards the person who... created them. At least we have distance from them at the station."
Holly surveyed Jack moment, clearly trying to tell if he was well enough to take on such an intense journey so soon after a major injury. "Alright…" She turned, leading the way out of the room. "… let's get suited up, then."