Disclaimer - I own no rights to the titles, characters, and trademarks herein.
A/N – Here it is, another month or so since my last chapter. I've been meaning to write this for some time now, between the great response to the last chapter (thanks for all of your reviews) and the momentum the story is gaining as we get closer to the end.
By the way, is anyone as excited as I am that the release date for "Bioshock Infinite" has been announced for this October? Sure, it will be a long wait, but at least now I know just how much longer I have to wait in agony.
There was a line I forgot to give to Cohen in the last chapter, so I'm giving it to Evelyn in this first scene.
TheBleachDoctor – Thanks! I think . . . I just hope by "the feels" you mean "good feels" and not "OMG, you f'in ruined Sander Cohen!"
CaliforniaStop – Thanks! I just hope you don't follow through on your threat to plaster me to the keyboard, at least not in the way Sander Cohen would. Haha. Very appropriate review in that sense, and, seriously, I really do appreciate your reviews. I just hope I don't disappoint.
AgedZen-01 – I'm excited to know I defied your expectations. Keep reading! I think I've got a few more surprises in store for you.
Oscar – Happy to know this movie of my mind is "Oscar-worthy." Okay. Cheesy joke, I know, but I couldn't resist.
Evelyn and Touch laughed heartily. Jack took off the gray suit coat Cohen's disciples had shoved him in and tossed it over a bar stool, imagining how sweaty and pale he must look. Maybe even as pale and greasy as Cohen himself.
"You don't ha' to worry 'bout that ol' fruitcake," Evelyn said. "He's got a pretty short attention span. He's probably standin' backstage in Fleet Hall right now, struck by a 'muse', writin' a frilly musical 'bout the special man who came into his life only to run away."
She picked up a fat white bottle and poured some of the contents into a fat round glass.
"Chechnya vodka," Evelyn said, offering Jack the glass. "You look like you could use some."
Jack's hand reached out, desperately wanting to take it, but instead he pushed it away.
"I'd better not."
Evelyn shrugged.
"Your loss."
She swallowed everything in the glass in one fast gulp.
"What'd ya think o' the Vita-Chamber?" she asked. "I tried one o' 'em a time or two, even though it was so blasted expensive. Worth the pretty penny, though. Like a whole day spent at the Adonis Baths in just a few short minutes. Course, that was 'fore Andrew Ryan turned the switch to make it so no one could get into one 'cept him."
Touch said nothing, but he sipped a glass of amber liquid with a more jovial expression than usual.
"Take a load off, Jackie," Evelyn continued. "This is still the best bar in Rapture, and we're almost to Hephaestus. We'll be back breathin' real air 'fore ya know it. Now's as good a time as any to celebrate."
Jack took a seat on a bar stool.
"I just can't stop thinking about Giuseppe. And Twich. And . . ."
Evelyn's baby blues immediately seemed to moisten, and Jack couldn't bring himself to mention Teagan.
"And Prof. Lagford," he added instead. "She was trying to write a message, right as she died. I can't stop wondering what she was trying to tell us."
He spelled out the letters he had seen written on the glass window in scarlet. W-O-U-L-D-Y-O-U-K.
"My guess?" Evelyn offered. "'Would you kill the bastards who did this to me?' And that's exactly what we're goin' to do."
She picked up the bottle of Chechnya again.
"For Giuseppe."
She tilted the bottle and let some of the clear liquid hit the floor.
"For Prof. Langford."
She spilled again.
"For Lucky. For Pancho."
Two more splashes.
"For Twitch."
More anger in her voice. Another splash.
"Hell, even for Peach Wilkins."
A big splash.
"And for Teagan."
She threw back her head and poured the rest of the bottle over her face, then threw it to the floor, smashing it to pieces. Unknowingly, in the same spot the bar's proprietor had shattered a glass cup months earlier.
"For my dear sister. I miss her. I miss all o' 'em. The next thing we spill in their honor will be Andrew Ryan's blood." Her pale cheeks were flushed. Her fists were clenched. Slowly, she exhaled. "Now where the hell's the damned whisky?"
As she busied herself rummaging through the bottles, Jack's eyes wandered to what must have been a photograph of the bar's founder hanging on the wall.
Bill McDonagh tried to appear calm as he entered Andrew Ryan's office. In his mind he was sweating bullets, but Mr. Ryan didn't seem to notice. The two armed splicers standing on each side of Ryan's desk, armed, pale, and covered in nasty blotches and growths, glared at McDonagh, drool running from the corners of their mouths.
"It'sh allrrrigh'," Ryan said to them. "You can leave ush alone."
The splicers nodded and walked past McDonagh. Their smell and McDonagh's nervousness made Bill worried he'd be ill on the Great Man's carpet. And that seemed disrespectful, even considering what Bill was planning to do.
What he couldn't stop planning since talking with a bandaged Dianne McClintock.
"Bill," Ryan said, seeming happy to see him. "You've no idea how good it ish to shee one shane frrriend among all the inshanity."
McDonagh's hands were buried deep in his pockets, where he hoped Ryan couldn't see them shaking. He felt worse than ever. But he knew what he had to do . . .
"Now, Bill, what'sh all thish about?"
McDonagh brought his hand from his pocket. He was holding a revolver.
Ryan just laughed bitterly.
"I hope thish ishn't yourrr idea of a joke, McDonagh."
McDonagh pulled back the hammer and moved a finger to the trigger.
"Nothin' funny 'bout it, sir."
He pointed the gun at Ryan's head.
"Why, Bill?" Ryan asked, calm as ever. "Forr Atlas?"
McDonagh knew he'd never get a clear shot if the hand holding the gun didn't stop shaking so damn much.
"No, Mr. Ryan," he said. "For Rapture. For . . . for you, sir."
"Me?"
"Look around you, Mr. Ryan," McDonagh said. "I know this isn't the utopia you saw when you asked me to help you build Rapture. Riots in the streets. Shops in ruin. The rich and the poor shooting each other down cold?"
"Therrre are prichesh that musht be paid to build parradishe on Earrth. I told you that in the verrrry beginning. But the Great Chain movesh, and I will not put a hand out to shtop it." He leaned back further in his chair. "No matter how much I want to."
McDonagh took a deep breath, trying to steady his gun hand.
"The price is too high," he said. "And I know, somewhere deep down inside, you know that."
"Are you rrreally going to shoot me, Bill?"
"I don't want to, Mr. Ryan. You've been a good friend to me. But I'm here because I believed in your vision. Because I believed in Rapture. I don't know if killin' you will stop this bloody civil war goin' on outside. But I know it's not goin' to stop with you still drawin' breath."
"Then do what you have to do," Ryan said, defiance in his voice. "If you'rre man enough."
Bill's arm, holding the gun, dropped to his side. He ran a sleeve over both eyes and sobbed once, gently, into it.
"Goddammit, Mr. Ryan," he said. "I love you."
Then he quickly brought the gun back up.
But Ryan was quicker. Before McDonagh could fire, Ryan had pulled a crossbow from the top drawer of his desk and fired a bolt through McDonagh's chest, pinning him to the wall.
Bill McDonagh managed a few agonized breath, agony mirrored in his eyes, before passing away.
Ryan's splicer bodyguards stepped back into the office as Ryan stepped away from his desk and studied his old friend's lifeless face up close.
"You disappoint me, Bill," he spat. "I neverrrr figurrred you forrr a parrashite." He turned to his bodyguards. "Take the body away. Put it with Mish McClintock'sh. Before they shtarrt to shtink up my offiche."
Finally with a few peaceful moments alone, in one of the small apartments in the backrooms of the Fighting McDonagh, Jack was doing something he'd been wanting to do for a while. He was listening to the recordings he had found in the Medical Pavillion after killing Dr. Steinman, trying to get an idea of his strange location's history through Diane McClintock's accounts.
As Jack listened to Diane's recording from New Year's Eve, the most obvious moment that Rapture had turned from Paradise to Perdition, something nagged at the back of his mind.
He rewound it and listened again.
"A toast to Diane McClintock, silliest girl in all of Rapture."
Followed by a shout.
"Long live . . ."
And then one word, a word Jack couldn't make out above the screaming and gunfire.
He rewound and listened again.
"To Diane McClintock, silliest girl in all of Rapture."
"Long live Ahhhhghhh!"
He rewound and listened again, this time straining to try to make out that last word.
"Silliest girl in all of Rapture."
"Long live . . ."
And then he thought he heard it. His blood froze as he rewound to listen one more time.
"Long live Atlas!"
Jack found Evelyn still pouring herself drinks at the bar, Mr. Touch softly snoring with a half empty bottle of hooch in the corner.
"Sure I can't offer you a glass o' some o' the finest liquor Sinclair Spirits has t' offer?"
She pushed a shot glass of whisky in his direction. He pushed it back.
"Not right now," he insisted. "But I think I have something you should listen to. Right now."
Evelyn brushed her short hair away from her ear and leaned closer to Jack to show interest.
He started playing the recording he'd just listened to, the one documenting Diane McClintock's thoughts as a civil war broke out on New Year's Eve.
"What's your point, Jackie?"
"Is that radio on?" Jack asked, indicating the two-way they communicated with Atlas with.
Evelyn shook her head.
"Not right now. Why?"
Jack rewound the recording.
"Listen again. Pay closer attention this time."
Evelyn nodded again.
"Long live Atlas!"
Evelyn just shrugged.
"Did you hear that?" Jack asked. "Someone said 'long live Atlas.'"
Evelyn narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.
"I want you to understand what I'm trying to say to you," Jack said. "We don't know anything about this man who's been guiding us around. What if he's playing us? What if . . . this is some kind of trap?"
"Jackie," Evelyn said. "You can't base that on one li'l line you heard on some Accu-Vox diary."
"So you don't find it suspicious that someone shouts his name as gunfire and murder erupts?"
Evelyn looked at Jack with the expression of a mother when her naïve child asks why the sky is blue. She took a swallow of whisky.
"Atlas was a freedom fighter."
"What?"
Evelyn took another swallow.
"He showed up when some o' Rapture's citizens started gettin' disgruntled as men like Cohen and Ryan got richer and they got poorer. He united the lower class. Told 'em they should present themselves to the higher rungs o' Rapture society. Stand up for equal treatment."
"Why tell me this now? Why not say anything when you started talking to Atlas?"
"'Cause you wouldn't understand," Evelyn said, finishing her glass. "You were new to Rapture. Why should I try to make you understand years o' discord and strife when it was hard enough just to keep you alive. 'Sides, if you'll remember correctly, I didn't trust Atlas. Not at first. You were the one all ready and willin' to do whatever he asked."
"I know. But ever since, something hasn't felt quite right. And after hearing this . . ."
Jack was cut off abruptly when Evelyn's mouth mashed hard against his.
When she moved her lips away from him, she murmured, so close he could feel her breath in his mouth, "I don't feel like talkin' right now."
As her lips rubbed against his again, Jack heard the familiar, comforting voice of Jim from Arcadia coming over a nearby radio.
"This one goes out to some new friends of ours, whichever part of Rapture they're in right now."
As Evelyn parted her lips slightly and Jack stuck his tongue through them, a soft, jazzy melody followed Jim's voice, and soon Etta James was singing "At Last."
The kiss grew more passionate, and Jack gripped hard on Evelyn's shoulder, pulling her body into his. They hadn't touched this closely since they were jostled together on the bathysphere from the Medical Pavilion to Neptune's Bounty. When their lips parted, Jack began kissing Evelyn's neck, actually enjoying breathing in the smell of her sweat.
He stood up from the bar and Evelyn clasped her legs around his waist. As they began to explore each other's mouths with their tongues, Jack managed to maneuver into the nearby gentlemen's room.
Neither of them minded the smell as Jack pushed Evelyn up against the door of a stall. She quickly rummaged through her pockets, finding enough change to get the pay door to open.
She grabbed Jack's dress pants only seconds before he grabbed her men's trousers, and soon both pairs of pants were hanging at their ankles.
Jack collapsed on top of the commode. Evelyn kicked her trousers the rest of the way off and straddled his lap with her surprisingly strong legs.
Their fingers were digging into each other's backs and shoulders deep enough to leave bruises as they pressed their faces together as hard as they could. They were both struggling for breath when the kiss ended again.
"This is my first time," Jack breathed into Evelyn's ear.
Evelyn pulled back and looked at him in surprise.
"You mean this is your first time with a girl?"
"No," Jack corrected her. "I mean, this is my first time making love under water."
Evelyn giggled.
"It's been a while for me."
He kissed her again as she grinded against his lap.
His hands ran up her tanktop, rubbing her back as they started rubbing their lips and bodies together faster and faster. Jack saw one quick flash of his last night with Jill in his mind as he realized that he'd been waiting for this moment with Evelyn's since the first time he heard her voice. She'd stopped kissing him and was gently chewing on his neck as he kept running his hands over the smooth skin of her back.
Then, nearing the moment of ecstasy, Jack looked up and saw a splicer behind Evelyn, ready to swing a lead pipe at the back of her head.
He scrambled for the gun in the pocket of the pants at his ankles, managing to pull it out and shoot the thuggish splicer in the center of its face.
Breathing hard, Evelyn looked from Jack to the dead splicer and back again. The splicers blood had sprayed the walls of the stall, as well as the back of Evelyn's hair and the side of Jack's face. Jack and Evelyn were both struggling to catch their breath, both unsure how much of their exhaustion was from the splicer's surprise attack and how much was from their own physical exertion.
"Well," Evelyn panted, barely getting the word out, "still feeling amorous, lover?"
In response, Jack just kissed her deeply. Evelyn pulled back, smiled wickedly, and began to rock sensuously in Jack's lap again.
Meanwhile, a security bot whizzed past their stall, and Atlas, somewhere, smiled.
A/N – Hope the love scene wasn't too terrible. This was my first "lemon," if you can call it that. Also, I didn't realize Etta James had died so recently until I was writing this chapter and trying to listen to some period music to go with it. In her memory.