JUNE 8, 1959 — 5:14 PM
By the time Jack turned up on Brigid Tenenbaum's doorstep the following day, Diane's final words to him had been long forgotten. Much heavier matters weighed on his mind instead.
The sight of the man he had encountered in Eve's Garden, the look of pure hate that had burned in his bulging eyes, still hung somewhere in the back of Jack's head. No matter how much he tried to put it out, it still remained. When he closed his eyes, it was the only image the projector of his mind would cast upon the darkness—that, and the ghostly vision he'd seen of his mother's murder.
He rang the doorbell to Tenenbaum's apartment first. When some seconds passed with no answer, he proceeded to rap at the door instead, hoping the sound of his fist pounding against the metal door would drown out the echoes in his mind, echoes of the man's electrocuted screams.
When Tenenbaum finally answered the door, it was with a raised eyebrow.
"Guten tag, Jack."
He nodded to her. For all the fortitude he had summoned up just to come here, words suddenly seemed at a loss to him.
"Hello, Dr. Tenenbaum."
She looked him over with an appraising eye, then folded her arms over her chest. It occurred to Jack that she was without her usual white lab coat—and of course she would be, for this was her home, after all. But it was still enough of a rare sight for him that it stuck out as remarkable in his mind.
"This is..." She paused for a moment, as though searching for the right word. "Highly unusual, Jack. For you to come to my home."
"I know," he said quickly, doing his best not to sound sheepish, "and I'm sorry for that. But there's something I need to..." This time it was his turn to pause; he shook his head before he continued. "I need to ask you some things."
"And you could not do this in my office because...?"
Too many answers came to his mind at that: because her office lacked privacy, because he needed her full attention, because the answers he needed were perhaps time-sensitive and he'd already wasted part of the day and he couldn't trust himself to make it all the way to the compound in the sort of state he was in. But more importantly than that...
"Because my father can't know about this."
A look of understanding came into her face. But a look of understanding when worn by Brigid Tenenbaum was hardly the same as a look of mercy or care, and so Jack was left waiting on tenterhooks all the same for her reply.
After an excruciatingly long moment of uncertainty, she finally stepped back. "Come."
He only nodded to show his gratitude as he made his way inside. Her apartment was more lavish than most, even for the upscale Mercury Suites, encompassing two stories all on its own. But it was on the first floor they remained, and it was into a parlor that Tenenbaum led him. It looked less like a parlor, however, and more like another of her many workspaces, with papers pinned to the walls and strewn across any flat surface. Jack didn't dare to try taking a closer look at their contents.
Tenenbaum sat, retrieving a still-lit cigarette from an ashtray beside her chair. She watched Jack until he took a seat as well.
"Talk."
Jack took a deep breath. It was still somewhat difficult for him to find words, but he had no choice but to try.
"Today, I..." Another deep breath. "I visited the shooting range today—the one near the carnival, you know."
There was no apparent recognition on her part, but she nodded anyway.
"As it turns out..." The weight of the gun still lingered in his hands, and he wrung them together in an effort to shake it off. "It turns out I'm quite the marksman. In every caliber they had for rent."
"Congratulations." Tenenbaum's tone was flat, and her face remained as impassive as ever.
A ghostly pulse fluttered somewhere beneath the pad of his thumb. He wrung his hands even tighter.
"I'd never fired a gun before in my life." Somehow he managed to keep his voice level. "Not as far as I can remember anyway."
Still, Tenenbaum's face was impassive. But she looked away this time, looking to the ashtray as she flicked ash off the dwindling end of her cigarette.
"Some people are preternaturally talented at this sort of thing."
"Don't patronize me, Dr. Tenenbaum." The words came out as a snap, but still he kept his voice level. "I couldn't remember having ever fired that gun even once in my life, but I still knew how to do it—I knew exactly what to do, and I knew exactly what to do with all of those other guns, too." He broke his hands away from each other to grip the arms of his chair as he leaned forward, closer to where Tenenbaum sat across from him. "Why would I know that? I know that there are lots of things I don't remember, things you and Suchong did to me that I can't remember for damn good reason—but why that?"
Tenenbaum didn't answer for some time, nor did she look up to him again.
"Your father would not want you to know this."
"I don't care!" He caught himself from shouting, but only just barely. "I don't care— I have a right to know, no matter what he thinks. It's my life, not his, goddamnit—even if he is the one who paid for it!"
At that, she finally looked up at him again, brow knit in an expression that seemed more to Jack like sorrow than anything else. The reason for it was beyond him, and he wasn't fully certain why, but he felt unsettled by it.
"The things your father has kept from you..." She glanced down, seeming uncertain. The idea of her being uncertain only managed to unsettle Jack even more. "There are many things your father keeps from you, perhaps more than you know. But he only does this for your own protection, Jack."
Something thudded deep in his chest, and Jack couldn't be sure whether it was his own heart. The question of whatever his father could possibly be protecting him from was too great for him to fathom—for now, at least.
"I don't need his protection," he said quietly, struggling to keep a quake from his voice. "Not if I'm going to be the man he wants me to be."
One of Tenenbaum's hands knotted in the smooth fabric of her skirt.
"That, I think, is precisely why he wishes to protect you."
That something thudded again. He shook his head; this was hardly what mattered at the moment.
"I already know one thing he tried to keep from me." Jack lowered his head, trying to gain eye contact with her again. "But I think I deserve to know more than that—and you're the only one who can help me, Dr. Tenenbaum."
She looked up one more time, and her eyes slightly narrowed.
"Are you certain of this?"
From that, Jack had a feeling he might be making a mistake. But he had no choice but to nod.
"I am."
Her lips pressed into a thin line as she paused for a long moment of contemplation.
"Very well. Some things... I will tell you what I can, because your protection is something I value as well."
Some things—it was a better result than Jack might have hoped for. But something in her tone left him waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"However, in exchange, I must ask you for your help."
And there it was.
"Help with what?"
Tenenbaum took a deep breath through her nose. Whatever it was, it seemed to be something she needed resolve to ask of him.
"Help me to rescue the Little Sisters—to undo what harm has been done to them."
At those two words—Little Sisters—Jack felt as though the bottom of his stomach had dropped into an endless pit.
His hand squeezed the armrest. "What—what do you mean, rescue them?"
"I mean exactly what I just told you, Jack." Where he was used to seeing a look of weariness in Tenenbaum's face and her eyes, there was now some fierce determination instead. But her gaze soon broke again, and that odd look of sorrow came over her instead. "Those children... I have done to them many grave wrongs. I cannot bear to see them suffer any longer."
Jack's head swam, much as it did whenever the thought of the Little Sisters came to him in any context, but even more so now. "I don't..." He shook his head again. "How? My father—he would never..."
"I do not care what he thinks," she said bitterly. "A feeling you know well, yes? But whatever profit he makes off his precious sales of ADAM is not worth the suffering of those little girls. I had hoped he would put a stop to it all after Fontaine, but..." Her face twisted into a dark scowl. "Your father no longer matters to me, not where the girls are concerned. I care only to put an end to their pain."
He found himself struggling to follow the line of her logic. It was horrible to him what those little girls went through, perhaps more horrible to him than anyone else, but without ADAM...without them, Rapture would likely cease to function, and how could he allow that to happen?
"I still don't understand."
"I am not asking for you to understand, Jack. I am only asking for you to help me."
Doubt once again began to take hold of him. He wanted whatever answers she had for him, he wanted them more dearly than anything else, but what she asked of him sounded like more than he could in good conscience give her.
"But how?"
She took one last drag off her cigarette and stubbed it out before she answered him. "I have developed a plasmid specifically for this: it destroys the slug inside the girl and neutralizes her mental conditioning, all without causing her any harm. It takes some time for their training to wear off, I have discovered, but the effects are mostly instantaneous."
"You've..." He reeled. "You have discovered? You mean to tell me you've already been—?"
"I have already freed several little ones from their torment, yes."
Tenenbaum stared at Jack with a hardness in her eyes that dared him to tell her she was crazy or wrong to have gone to such lengths already. He didn't dare.
"They are hidden away from your father's eyes, and this keeps them safe for now... But they are orphans all, and there is no place in Rapture where I can hide them forever. If they are to have any chance at leading happy lives without becoming those...those creatures again, they must be released to the surface."
The surface. Something twisted in Jack's gut at the words, something remarkably close to fear.
"How..." It was unfathomable to him, the thought of anyone ever leaving Rapture. "How are you going to do that?"
She hesitated for a long moment, giving Jack another one of those hardened looks.
"It will be difficult... This is why I need your help." She crossed one of her legs over the other. "But until I can be certain that I have your help, I can tell you no more."
The decision loomed before him like the prospect of crossing an impossibly vast plateau. The promise of the truth glimmered in the distance like a far-off oasis, but how could he know with certainty that the passage would be safe?
"Dr. Tenenbaum, I can't just..." He shook his head again, more violently than before. "I don't know if I can do this."
"What did you say to me earlier? I am the only one who can help you—and you are the only one who can help me, Jack." She leaned forward, eyes narrow again. "I have already agreed to make it worth your while. There is no reason we should not be able to help each other."
"But I don't..." Jack put a hand to his face, squeezing his temples in an effort to quell the pounding in his head. "I don't know that for sure. Maybe if I pressed Dr. Suchong, or if I went digging through the archives at the compound..."
He trailed off, knowing even as he said it just how hopeless it all sounded. Tenenbaum, on the other hand, did not appear to be so easily affected.
"If that is truly what you wish, fine." Her voice was quiet now, cold and calculating, more like the Tenenbaum he knew than she had been during this entire conversation so far. "Then do not help me. Do not help them because you made a bargain with me. But help me to help them because they are like you, Jack—because they have suffered from my wrongdoing."
Jack felt his pulse quicken at her words, and it was not without some reluctance that he looked up at her. Comparing himself in any way to the Little Sisters was not something he had ever dared to breathe aloud, but the weight of it on his mind was an ever-constant presence, heavy enough that Tenenbaum now had his full, if not entirely willing attention.
"I have made...many great sins." Tenenbaum leaned back in her chair, drawing her gaze away again. "Sins against those little ones...and against you as well, Jack. I cannot undo all that has been done to you; that power is lost to me. But I have the power to undo what has been done to these children—and with your help, perhaps... Perhaps I may be able to amend what has been done to you as well."
What has been done to you—the words hung in the space between them as if given shape by Jack's confusion and doubt. Just what had been done to him that Tenenbaum would feel so sorry for him? Was that something he really wanted to know?
Despite his doubts, it took him only a moment of consideration: he had to know. He would never be able to rest until he had the truth, and until he knew with absolute certainty that he had the entire truth.
He took a deep breath as he rubbed his hands over his face. For all the surety of his decision, the gravity of it made it difficult for him to voice aloud.
"Okay," he said quietly. He hesitated to look her in the eye, but he did so regardless. "I'll do it... Whatever you need from me, I'll do it. But I want to know everything."
Tenenbaum held his gaze as she sighed deeply. It seemed to be a sigh of relief, but where Tenenbaum was concerned, Jack could never be sure.
"Gut." She stood, then crossed the room to sift through a pile of papers on a side table. "Sehr gut... It will be best to begin as quickly as possible, I think." She kept talking as she gathered the pile together, then began unpinning other sheets from the wall. "There are some things I must retrieve from my laboratory. We will go there together."
"And?" said Jack, rising from his seat as well. "Then what? Are you going to start giving me some answers?"
She had been carefully packing away her papers into a neat leather satchel, but his words gave her pause.
"We will discuss this on the way."
Jack supposed it was the best answer he was going to get for now. In the time it took him to reach that supposition, however, an explosively loud noise sounded off from somewhere beyond the walls of Tenenbaum's apartment.
Tenenbaum froze. "What was that?"
Jack froze as well, though less with surprise and more because the sounds that came immediately after—echoing screams, whooping cries, and the words "Atlas lives!" carrying up through the walls and heights of Mercury Suites—forced the memory of what Diane had last said to him to finally come crashing down upon him with all its might.
"Oh, no."
He wasn't consciously aware of the expression that came over his face, but whatever it was, it was sufficient to cause Tenenbaum to adopt her own look of alarm.
She slung the satchel over her shoulder and immediately began to rummage through the side table's drawers. "You still have your weapon?" she said to Jack without looking at him, instead keeping her attention focused on the pistol she'd just retrieved.
"Uh—" It was difficult to shake himself back to full attention when the specter of what a massively stupid thing he had just done hung over him like a stubbornly heavy cloud, but he managed it in time to quickly pat himself down. "Yes— Yes, I've got it."
"Then we are fortunate that you chose today to practice your marksmanship, ja?" She nodded in the direction of the front door. "If those are truly men of Atlas out there, then it won't be long until—"
At that moment, as if on cue, someone rammed into the door from the outside. Every muscle in Jack's body tensed at the sound, and he reached for his gun without fully being aware of it. If they were really Atlas's men—he was a friend of Atlas, he'd given him aid, so would they stop when they recognized him? But Jack knew that would be impossible almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind. Atlas had barely been able to call off his splicer guards; what power would he have to call off an entire mob?
The door was rammed again, and this time it nearly buckled from the force. Jack took a wary step back, hand tightening on the grip of his pistol. Killing a man with his bare hands had been so easy, so natural, despite how sick it still made him. Would killing a man with a gun be all too different?
"This way!" called Tenenbaum, having already made for the stairs to the upper floor. "Those idiots won't spend all day trying to break it down—we'll go the other way!"
Jack could barely think to respond as he ran after her. Not that he was given much time for a response, as the ramming finally ceased just before he followed Tenenbaum up the stairs, and another explosion sounded from somewhere below.