"You know I was just talking about you." Jack said. He inhaled sharply through his teeth. Brigid Tenenbaum had removed a needle from his swollen eyelid. It was filled with a liquid that was clear but with a yellow tint.

"This should be all of it." Brigid said. She put the syringe down on the table. Then crossed her arms over her crossed legs and looked up at Jack as he stood rubbing his eye.

"Why's it gotta fill up with liquid there?"

"The plasmids have strange reactions to your body. It is price you pay for power. What have you been doing with this power I have given you?"

Jack pulled his hand away and looked at the study of Brigid Tenenbaum. Any where there was a flat surface was either covered by book or paper. In between those there was usually glass tubes or syringes. He saw in the corner of her ceiling high bookshelves a knee-high stack of dirty dishes surrounded by drinking glasses and the occasional beaker with the remnants of coffee.

"Weyll. I ran down to the fisheries, all dressed up, to retrieve some surplus guns. Thompsons and trench guns, mostly from The War and Koh-Ray-Uh. Theeen, I went arrested some poor nothing for running ammo. Tried to get him to turn in Frank so we can get Ryan all paranoid, I don't know. Didn't work. Shot the guy in the head. Went saw Howard. He's all fucked up. Says he's seeing ghosts and shit. Went saw Frank. He's doing good, worried a bit about you. When I told him about, you know, all this. Told him you were fine. Cause you're fine, right? I, mean. You're fine right?"

"I've been working on these children." Brigid said. She rested her face on her hand, which rested on her knee. She looked at Jack with her head tilted sideways. "It is taxing. When I was in the camps, I ran many experiments. I ran them on all people. Old. Youths. Tall. Black haired. Blonde. Skinny. Well, there weren't any fat ones at the camps. My ability to insulate science from humanity gave me great advantages. Allowed my survival. But these girls. It must always be girls. And they are so trusting. They are so vulnerable. They are so…"

Jack held his open hands out at his sides.

"Cute?"

"Little." Brigid said. "They are very little."

"Well. Okay."

"And I have done it. I have successfully combined human form with the slug host to produce a symbiotic relationship that yields more adam."

"How does it do that?"

"Would you understand if I explained?"

"Well I get the basics. You stick the slug in the girl how do you get the adam out of them after that?"

"Their waste."

"You mean their piss and what not?"

"No they regurgitate the adam."

"You farm little girls vomit?"

Brigid close her eyes for four heartbeats then opened them to Jack. Jack to an uncertain step backwards and held his thumb back over his shoulder.

"So I should go?"

"Actually no." Brigid stood up. She walked over to one of the many tables covered in mess. "I have two requests."

"Well." Jack said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. "Shit."

"There is a need for supplies."

"Dammit woman. I swear if you say what I think you're gunna say. I'm. I'm just not gunna take it all that well." He pulled one out and stuck it in his mouth not lighting it.

"We need suits."

"Sonuvabitch!"

"Jack. This is not my fault."

"That's my free time you're cutting into there. You know, it ain't like I get much of it neither. Then I got get help to help me go look around the sewers. Rapture's a helluva lot bigger than you think."

"Suchong keeps ruining test subjects."

"What are you even doing with those things?"

"We need more. We will need many more suits, Jack. There were thousands of diving suits for the builders. They can't just have disappeared."

"No, dammit. But in classic Rapture fashion they got buried and forgotten and now I gotta go dig the damn things up."

"So you'll do it?"

"Yes, dammit. I just hope we find a bigger stockpile of the damn things." Jack rubbed his head and started toward the door. "I'll get on it though. Might take a while so tell the dink to make whatever y'all got left last."

"Jack wait. The other request."

"Shit, shit, shit." Jack said. He put the heels of his hands into the socket of his eyes. "Whatcha need?"

Brigid turned around and held up a glass beaker.

"Sample."

Jack dropped his hand to his side and after awhile opened his eyes.

"You need me to go out and get a slug?"

"No." Brigid said. "I need a sample of semen."

"Semen?"

"Yes, semen."

Jack's head went back and he scratched he ran his hand through his hair.

"Semen?"

"Yes, Jack. The liquid that…"

"I know what it is dammit. How am I supposed to get you that."

Brigid held the bottle out to her side and looked at Jack with her bro furrowed and her mouth open.

"You need my semen?" The cigarette fell out of his mouth and rolled across the floor.

"Where else would I ask you to get it?"

"What? You need my? Why?"

"I am running experiments." Brigid said. Her free hand went to her hips. She still held her glass in front of her.

"What could that possibly be used for?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Because it's odd. In a world of odd shit, this still manages to stand out."

Brigid reached her hand up and pinched her brow.

"I'm having to learn fertilization of the female egg for a project. I'm having to learn how to change the child to fit specification before it is put in the womb. To test on a fertilized egg I need a fertilized egg. To get fertilized egg I need semen."

"Okay," Jack held a hand out in front of him that was pointing. "In all honesty I didn't get a lot of that. But that don't mean you gotta be mean about it. Who's kid are you talking about?"

"Can you help me or not? I'd rather not go around asking strangers."

"How am I supposed to just get that to you?"

"There is bathroom." Brigid said. She pointed at it. She looked at him.

"Now?"

"Yes, now. I am busy or did you not notice?"

"How am I suppose to?"

"I need to show you this? Go do what boys love to do so much. Careful you don't go blind."

"Oh we're telling jokes now? I'm sorry if I'm not just ready to hand over a sample, doc. In case you didn't notice I'm in a lot of stress right now. I can't really get the feeling, right now."

Brigid looked up to the ceiling and exhaled loudly. She walked behind Jack who continued to face the wall.

"I mean I am running guns right now, woman. Pretty much arming a small army. Not just guns neither. Cheap shitty plasmids for cheap shitty fisherman goons."

Brigid closed the door to Jack's back right shoulder. She locked the door. He turned around and followed her as he talked.

"And I mean things are gettin odd on the Ryan's side of the equation. Sullivan used to be this squared away nit picky guy. Now he's a mess over all this Fontaine shit that's about to go down. Ryan is too busy humping his way through every actress and singer we got down here. Why are you locking the doors?"

"Privacy." Brigid said. She reached up to the top button on her shirt.

"Um. Well on top of that I got this scar on my face and my eye keeps turning into a bubble. It's rather disgusting."

Brigid unbuttoned the last button on her shirt and dropped it to the floor. She was bare to the waist as she walked towards Jack. Jack's eyes were on her chest and his mouth hung slightly open.

"You'd be a lot warmer if you wore something under that shirt."

"It's been awhile hasn't it Jack? It's been a long winter."

"How. How." Jack said. Brigid reached up and put her arms around his neck. His eyes came up to hers. "How do you know it's winter?"

….

"Why would you put those in the ice box?" Jack said.

"To preserve." Brigid said. She was wearing only his pants with the belt pulled very tight. She looked back at Jack who was lying on the floor only in his underwear. He had finally lit his cigarette. "Two samples."

"Momma always said I was an overachiever."

"Did she now?" Brigid shut the ice box door and walked back to sit in her chair and lean forward with her face in her hands. "What was your mother like?"

"Tough woman. Raised me by herself." Jack said. "Ain't like my dad ran out or nothing. Got a job working at Sloss Furnace when I wasn't yet born. Died in a accident. Momma moved down south from Birmingham remarried a drunk shit head and raised me there."

"I thought she raised you by herself?"

"Well, she had a couple kids with the new guy. He was a drinker, but not all bad. Mard Gras was fun. Just if you gotta choose between your own kids and one left over from some other fella, it ain't really a choice."

Brigid looked to the scar on his face and how it seemed to make a never ending smirk from his lip. Then she looked back to his eyes as he stared at a cigarette.

"Is that actually true?"

"Yea actually. You're one a the few people who got the God's honest outta me." Jack said. "Brigid?"

"Yes Jack?"

"You ain't gunna talk about your past are you?"

Brigid leaned back and looked at her hands folded in her lap over the baggy unfitting pants. She stayed that way and Jack put the cigarette back to his face and exhaled smoke.

"That's okay. I'm used to this bein a one way street. Can you tell me what all this was for?"

"I do want to." Brigid said. "But this is not something I can share."

"Well can you at least tell me what all the diving suits are for?"

Brigid smiled and looked back to the table behind her.

"Well, I can tell you that." She reached back. She brought her hand around and Jack looked up to see her smiling and holding an empty beaker. "But you will have to earn it."

….

Deep below there was a holding area. Here was a room sealed off since Raptures completion. It was one of many such rooms.

Before this room had been busy. It had constantly been filled with the best and brightest welders and engineers who used its airlock to go out into the ocean and build a city in the sea. A basketball court could easily fit into the central room. Attached to this room were many sub sections for living quarters, a sub section for utilities, and a sub section to warehouse the many suits used by the workers.

Here hundreds of suits had been stored in this a relatively small post. When Rapture had been completed there had been such an abundance of suits for the workers of the city that many of the construction suits had been left behind in this area that had been forgotten by Rapture.

It had not been busy for a long time.

But now it was busy, with thousands and thousands of occupants.

In the central section many of the suits had been assembled. They had been arranged standing in a circle fours rows deep around a center. They filled the room up. This room constantly buzzed and moved.

Throughout the suits, in their face places and arms and legs, there was constant movement. It seemed to ripple over every thing in the room. There the yellow and the red and the green masses moved over everything.

Large bags of sugar water hung from each corner of the room and randomly from the ceiling. At the floor of each corner and throughout the suits were tall wooden boxes with stacked slits that were covered in the movement and the buzzing.

At the very center surrounded by the suits was a man sitting with his legs crossed. Over his whole form the bees crawled and covered him. His eyelids and his lower lip drooped down and boils grew in cluster from his neck across his shoulders. He sat with his eyes open staring out into the suits as each one bore a ghostly face.

And each ghost in each suit begged of him endlessly.

"Rapture." They said. "You must protect Rapture."