They don't find much in the storage room-just a couple of empty crates and a pistol for Elizabeth. It's empty, of course-typical of things in Rapture. Jack gives her a couple of his own rounds, and Elizabeth loads them into her new weapon as Jack turns the area over for other supplies that they might have missed.
Of course, he doesn't find anything except for a couple moldy slices of bread and a dead rat curled up in the corner. He tells Elizabeth as much, who shakes her head.
"Ugh. I hate this place."
"Same here. The sooner we're out, the better. Come on, let's head to the bathysphere. We need to head to head to Hephaestus."
Elizabeth follows him out of the room, putting the newest addition to her arsenal in her satchel. They've just exited when Elizabeth hears something.
"Christ, is somebody there?"
Jack immediately turns around, only to be confronted by the door Elizabeth had just closed behind her.
"Liz, someone's there."
"Elizabeth," she corrects him. "And I didn't hear anything," she lies. Now is not the time to delay from their current objective, whatever that is.
"Hey, can you help me, man? Can you help me out?" the unknown voice yells again, this time louder.
Jack begins to open the door, but Elizabeth stops him. "It could be a trap."
"Or it could be someone in trouble. Stay here if you want-I'm going in."
And he does. He opens the door and heads straight inside, leaving Elizabeth on the other side, gaping at his stupidity.
She groans, getting out her pistol and reluctantly following him inside.
"So? Not seeing anybody."
Jack glares at her, but doesn't say anything as they walk through the storage room again.
It's a few minutes before they hear the voice again. When they do, Elizabeth immediately realizes that she was right-it was a trap.
"Hello, beautiful!" the Splicer cries from somewhere hidden in the room. Elizabeth whirls around, expecting to come face-to-face with him-but he's nowhere to be seen. Instead, she sees a red puff of smoke where she assumes the Splicer used to be.
"Where'd he-" Jack begins, but is quickly cut off by the man-Splicer-himself.
"Hey! Over here!" The Splicer snaps his fingers and Jack is nearly set on fire. He dodges the attack just in time, though.
"Gah!"
"Damnit. Okay, here's the plan-"
She has to cut herself off to avoid also being set on fire by the Splicer, who has just reappeared behind Jack. "Jack! Behind you!"
Jack turns just in time to see that the Splicer has his fingers pointed at Jack's head, ready to charge up a Plasmid, and jumps out of the way, leaving Elizabeth vulnerable to his attacks. She charges up her current Plasmid and hopes that whichever one it is, it's effective.
She releases, and the Splicer shrieks in pain as the effects of Shock Jockey course through his body. She grins, making sure to turn the safety off before aiming her pistol at the Splicer's face. He crumples to the ground, dead.
Pausing to catch her breath, Elizabeth turns to look at Jack, giving him a pointed look that quite plainly says, I told you so.
Jack nearly misses the look, instead focusing in the dead Splicer on the ground. When he does notice, however, he frowns. He lets his head fall back, groaning, "You were right, okay? You were right." He throws up his hands dramatically. "Can we keep moving now?"
Elizabeth flashes him a falsely sweet smile. "Of course," she says.
Jack gives her his best bitchface before stepping over the corpse of the Splicer and heading upstairs.
He's mumbling.
She really hates it when he does that.
"What?' she finally snaps, turning to him.
He stops rifling through the pockets of the corpse he's kneeling beside and looks at her curiously.
"What?"
"What are you mumbling about?"
"I'm not mumbling."
"Yes, you are. Now, either tell me what's wrong or shut up."
Jack grunts. "It's just. What kind of Splicer can do that? Teleport, I mean. I've never seen a Splicer do that before."
Oh. That's what's wrong. She didn't know what she'd expected. "Oh. Um, they're called Houdini Splicers. They...teleport, and stuff."
He casts an accusing glare her way. "'And stuff?' You mean like use Plasmids?"
She ignores it pointedly. "Yeah. Are you done yet?" she asks impatiently, changing the subject.
Jack notices. "Subtle," he chuckles. It's without humor. "Uh, almost."
"Why exactly are we going to Hephaestus again? I don't think you ever told me."
He doesn't answer. Elizabeth doesn't know if she's grateful for that or not.
Damn Andrew Ryan.
Damn him and everything he stands for.
"Ryan's woman in Arcadia is an old betty named Langford. An okay sort, but not above doing a dirty job for a dollar. If she's still kicking around, I'm sure she's gonna want to save her trees. After all, she planted the damn things," Atlas' voice echoes through the radio.
"Okay...any idea where to find her?" Jack asks.
Both wait with bated breath as Atlas mumbles incoherently through the radio. "Um, Atlas?"
"Yeah, hang on...Okay. Try her old lab. It's a place called 'Langford Research Laboratories.'"
"Where is that, exactly?"
"It's in Arcadia. You'll find it."
"How, exactly?"
The radio doesn't respond.
"Great," Jack grumbles. "Guess we're on our own then. You know, sometimes it feels like he isn't even helping at all."
Elizabeth snorts at this. "Gee, I wonder why."
"Oh, come on. I know you don't trust people you've just met, but-"
"But you do?"
"If they're trying to help me get out of a failing dystopia filled with things that want to kill me, then yes. Besides, Atlas has done nothing but help me. Why would someone trying to kill me do that?"
Elizabeth knows the answer, but she doesn't tell Jack that. Instead, she simply says, "Let's just find this Langford woman and get the hell out of this place. It's unsettling."
"Unsettling? I thought you were a woman of taste," he jokes.
Instead of humoring him with a response, she simply rolls her eyes and turns away, heading towards the nearest door.
She hears Jack huff a quiet laugh before hearing his footsteps as they make to follow her.
"It just doesn't make any sense. If Arcadia supplies oxygen to all of Rapture, why kill it off? Unless Andrew Ryan isn't human, which, at this point, seems kind of likely, then he also needs oxygen, yes?"
Jack shrugs. "Maybe he's got his own supply in his office."
Elizabeth stares at him like that's the dumbest thing she's ever heard. It's not, but it's definitely up there.
"Wow. Just...wow."
Jack scowls at her. "I'm just speculating."
"And that's what you come up with? Seriously?"
Jack doesn't grace her with a response.
He keeps staring at her.
She's starting to get irritated, because whenever she catches him doing it, or calls him out on it, he denies it. Seriously, it's getting annoying.
"Why do you keep staring at me?" she asks the sixth or seventh time she catches him-she'd lost count a while ago.
"I'm not staring," he replies, for the sixth or seventh time.
"Yes, you are. You keep staring at me. Why?"
He doesn't answer, which makes Elizabeth fume.
"Why?" she demands to know.
That gets him to say something, although Elizabeth isn't sure what.
"What?"
He mumbles again, but this time she catches most of what he's saying. "Just..doesn't make sense, is all. You being here, I mean."
"What do you mean?"
He looks her in the eye now, and Elizabeth can see now that his face is red. It takes her longer than it should to realize he's blushing. A few more words from him confirms that it's from embarrassment. "You're just...weird, is all. I mean, you seem to know a lot about this place, despite your being here an accident. And that's another thing-I looked for survivors. I didn't find anyone alive. I found bodies. That's it. So how the hell did you survive?"
Elizabeth had been waiting for him to question her story. It had been bound to happen sooner or later, she supposes. "I guess I was farther below the water than you were," she replies. Her voice is calm, but her heart quickens with fear. Fear of what, she doesn't know-but she knows the feeling of fear, and she's feeling it right now.
Jack looks unconvinced. "Uh-huh. Sure."
"Look, believe me or don't believe me, what I'm saying is the truth. And I'm not going to tell you different."
It's funny, how she's trying so hard to convince him to believe an obvious lie. She doesn't really know why she thought he would believe her-maybe she had thought she was better at this game than she actually was, or perhaps she had thought him an easy target because of his naivety. It doesn't really matter now, she supposes-just that he believe it.
She snaps herself out of her musings and turns to look at her companion. He's staring at her again, the hint of a smile on his face, and Elizabeth is suddenly struck with a startling, yet at the same time completely obvious, realization.
"Do-do you think I'm pretty? Is that why you keep staring at me?"
Jack looks like a child who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "What? No," he scoffs, trying to play it off. He turns away from her gaze, choosing to look at the floor instead.
It's Elizabeth's turn to look unconvinced. "You do. Oh, my God."
"I do not," he denies vehemently, folding his arms across his chest defiantly.
Elizabeth chuckles, turning back to her task of searching the corpse before her for valuables. "Yeah, sure."
She turns the body over on its front, trying her hardest to ignore the smell, now ten times more pungent. Rotting flesh does not smell good when it's been marinated in salty seawater.
She rifles through the pockets, but finds nothing of value. She sighs, stands up, and heads over to the next one.
Briefly, she wonders if maybe he feels the angry caterpillars too, but she quickly dismisses that thought, instead focusing on finding a first aid kit for Jack's head injury that he'd gotten in their last battle with another one of those Houdini Splicers.
"How's your head?" she asks nonchalantly, turning the corpse onto its back to look at its pockets.
"It's fine," he mumbles. She really hadn't taken him for a mumbler, but she also hadn't taken herself to be the type to kill a man for petty revenge. She's been wrong before-she admits it.
"Really? I would have thought that getting a lead pipe smashed into your skull would be at least a little disorienting."
"Oh, and I suppose you would know, seeing as you've clearly been hit in the head with a heavy piece of metal before. Right?"
Elizabeth rolls her eyes, not bothering to grace him with a response. As she pulls a first aid kit from the inside of the corpse's satchel, she thinks to herself, Yes, yes I would.
"My trees! It wasn't you, was it? No... Ryan...! I think I've got a way to save the trees, it's a genetic vector that- Oh, look who I'm talking to... Could you find me a sample of Rosa Gallica for me? Look in the Grotto... I've got to keep working while there's still time…"
The television cuts to black once more, leaving Elizabeth and Jack standing in front of it, unsure of what exactly just happened.
"Come on," Elizabeth finally says. "We'd better find that 'Rosa Gallica' sample."
"And where, exactly, would that be? If you hadn't noticed, she didn't really give us the specifics."
She shrugs. "Guess we'll have to find it on our own, then."
"Great," he grumbles. "Another mission where we have to 'look until we find it.' God, I hate those."
Elizabeth puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. "Do you want to be stuck down here for the rest of your life? Which, given your tendency for stupid decisions, is bound to be short, by the way."
Jack gives her another classic bitchface and storms off down the tunnel, leaving Elizabeth to follow him, smirking.
"So...where are you from?"
Jack casts a suspicious glance her way, which impresses Elizabeth greatly. She wouldn't have thought he was capable of such a thing. "Why do you care?"
She shrugs. "Just making small talk."
A pause.
"I'm from New York," she lies, to ease the growing tension between them. "I...lived there with my father. He was a private detective."
"Fancy," he says. "What made you decide to leave?"
"Adventure, of course. It's what every girl wants. I...wanted to see the world."
"Huh."
There's more of that awkward silence that happens when one of them is silent for too long, and Elizabeth can feel the tension growing thick in the air.
Jack breaks it by saying, "I grew up on a farm. In Wisconsin. It...it wasn't perfect, but...it was home."
His voice is tinged with sadness, and Elizabeth wonders if he actually did live on the farm before he was activated, or if that fantasy was just something that Fontaine had made up and put in his head as part of the elaborate con he was currently pulling. Continuing the conversation with some caution now, she says, "What made you decide to leave?"
"I went to visit my cousins in England. Dad's side of the family." He smiles, but it's quiet, and has a tinge of sadness to it, much like his voice. "The flight was delayed an hour. After that, well, we boarded, and...well, you know what happened next. I think I was asleep when it happened...the next thing I know, I'm falling into the freezing cold water and trying to stay alive. What about you? Where were you headed?"
"Paris," is her automatic response, and she's just as shocked by it as Jack is.
"Paris." He whistles. "Wow. That's...quite a place. Can you speak French?"
"Oui, je peux parler français."
That gets a laugh out of Jack, who says, "I guess you can. What did you say?"
"'I can speak French.'"
He nods. "Ah."
His gaze suddenly makes Elizabeth feel uncomfortable, and so she tries to avoid it, looking anywhere but at him. Her eye catches something large and pink growing on one of the bushes.
"There it is! Over there."
Jack looks to where she is pointing and grins.
"Finally. We've only been looking for it for two years," her companion grumbles, stepping up to the bush and plucking the flower off of it. He inspects it for a moment, turning it over in his hands before seemingly making a decision and handing it to Elizabeth.
She looks at him questioningly.
"I'm too clumsy. I'll probably crush it or something," he explains.
She nods in agreement, moving to take the flower from his hands, but Jack pulls his hand back before she can. He hesitates before moving to brush a few strands of hair out of her face and placing the flower in her hair. He cocks his head, admiring his work.
Elizabeth moves to touch the flower, but is suddenly afraid of disrupting it. She drops her hand to her side. "I could have shot you, you know," she mutters, blushing furiously. She ducks her head to avoid his gaze, hoping he doesn't notice how red her face is.
"Yeah, I just realized that. Probably should have warned you," he chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.
Elizabeth smiles.
Yet another one of those awkward silences ensue. Neither of them say a word to break it for a while.
"You look...nice."
The corner of her lips turn up in a sort of half-smile this time; she's not exactly sure what to say to that, but she appreciates the compliment all the same. "Thank you," she murmurs, barely audible.
That awkward tension is threatening to come back at any moment, and Elizabeth scrambles to find something to say before her thoughts are interrupted by Atlas.
"Did you get it yet? It's been at least thirty minutes."
Both jump at the sudden noise, and Jack picks up his radio.
"Yeah, we found it. We're heading back now."
"Good."
The original chapter was too long, so I decided to split it into two parts. The next part is already written, so it will be up tomorrow!