JUNE 9, 1959 — 11:29 PM
"What have you done to her?!"
That voice was the first thing to pierce the fog of Diane's mind after a sharp pain in her head roused her back into consciousness—that voice and the low thudding steps of a Big Daddy in the distance, reverberating through the ground and causing the floor beneath her to tremble.
Was that voice Jack's?
"Easy, lad. Just had to subdue her, that's all."
Slowly, sluggishly, she attempted to regain control of her limbs, one at a time. Memories returned to her in rapid succession, memories of what had just happened—of Suchong, of Atlas, of her worry and fear for Jack's life...
If Jack was here—and that other voice, she was certain that was Atlas—if both of them were here, then that meant...
The dank, empty streets of Apollo Square gradually came into view as she struggled to push herself upright. She had to do something. She didn't know what she could do at this point, but she had to do something.
"Jack?"
His head snapped to look down at her, eyes suddenly wide with worry. He still looked like hell, but at least he seemed to be considerably more alert than when last she saw him.
"Diane—"
"Ah, ah."
Before Jack could come any closer to her, Atlas had a gun trained on him. Jack drew out his own in response, but he didn't seem sure where to aim it.
"Remember what I just told you, boyo. This woman is a traitor."
She'd had some inkling of the situation from the start, but now the full gravity of it settled upon Diane with all its weight and horror.
How deeply entwined with Atlas's cause had Jack gotten himself? How deeply entrenched in Jack's values had Atlas made his own? Jack had been so desperate to find him that day, she remembered, but how much of that desperation was true loyalty? Did Jack consider Atlas to be such a friend that he would do what was willed of him without question?
"Jack—"
Strength was returning to her legs, but not quickly enough for her to stand just yet. She reached for him instead, struggling to find what words would suffice to tell him what he needed to know: that Atlas wanted only to see him suffer, that Atlas had done all of this to her, that Atlas was no friend to either one of them.
"Jack, don't—don't listen to him—he's been lying to you, Jack, please—"
But Jack only continued to look down at her, gun stretched askew, his face twisted with despair.
"Atlas, what—" Jack shook his head violently before turning his gaze back to Atlas. "What do you mean, she's a traitor?"
"Does it matter?" Atlas's face was set into a deep frown, and he drew away his gun to gesture at Diane as he spoke. "This woman is little more than a rat, you know. If she's left to scurry about any longer, she'll undermine all that we've worked for—and all that you've worked for, as well."
Jack's knuckles were white on the grip of his pistol. "That's not good enough, Atlas. Give me just one good reason why I should do what you say."
Diane wondered if one good reason was really all Jack needed to pull the trigger. But she wanted desperately to believe anything but that.
Atlas's frown only deepened into a scowl.
"I've given you more than reason enough to do as I say, Jack—or is the fact that your own life is at stake not good enough for you?"
Diane felt her heart pounding in her chest. Had Atlas really threatened Jack's life over something like this, or was there something bigger going on? No, regardless of that—if Jack's life was really at stake, then which life would he choose?
Which life would she even want him to choose?
"Now, would you kindly put the broad down already?"
With the finality of Atlas's tone, there couldn't be much time left for Jack to make that choice.
Diane flinched away, squeezing her eyes shut as tightly as she possibly could. Despite the strength still returning to her, she was frozen with fear.
"No."
At that, however, she found the will to look up again.
Atlas's eyes were wide, as though he'd just been struck in the face. Then his features became twisted with rage, like none Diane had ever seen before.
"Now, Jack..." Atlas took a wary step closer to the both of them, and Diane found herself edging away in response. "Maybe you didn't hear me correctly—"
"I heard you just fine," said Jack, his voice suddenly bolstered with fury, and he took a step forward as well. "What makes you think I'm going to do everything you say just because you helped me before, or because you promised to be my friend? What made you think I was ever going to kill my father—"
He cut himself short there, and violently shook his head before he continued:
"What makes you think I'm going to kill Diane just because you asked me nicely?"
The gravity of the situation hadn't lessened in the slightest, but Diane felt as though those words were enough to lift her to her feet all on their own. She edged closer, still trying to get herself off the ground...
"Bloody hell, Jack—" Atlas had stopped dead when Jack began his approach, but he didn't back down. "Just listen to me for one bloody second—and would you kindly put a bullet in this woman's brain?"
"Goddamnit, do you really think I'm going to just—"
"Jack, achtung!"
The radio slung over Jack's shoulder suddenly burst to life; the voice that came through its speaker was female, heavily accented, and one that Diane didn't recognize. But it was enough to cast both Jack and Atlas into silence.
"I knew it. I had not dared it to be true, but now... Now, I know."
All trace of expression had fallen from Atlas's face. If Diane didn't know any better, she might have thought he looked afraid.
"There is only one man who would think to use those words in an attempt to force your hand, Jack—'would you kindly'... And that man is Frank Fontaine."
Frank Fontaine?
"What?"
Jack sounded just as confused as Diane felt herself. Fontaine had been killed over a year ago, hadn't he?
But when she looked back to face Atlas once more, at the snarling scowl he now wore upon his face, she saw it—she saw what had filled Suchong with so much fear in his final moments.
"That— That's one hell of an accusation to throw at a man!" There was a stammer in Atlas's voice, so suddenly very unlike the man she knew Atlas to be. "Fontaine's long dead, we all know that! Surely you can't believe—"
"Did he die, or was he forced into hiding?" The voice on the radio would not let herself be silenced. "But you cannot hide any longer. As soon as Ryan discovered what we had done, as soon as we explained to him the purpose behind Fontaine's greatest weapon, he made us ensure that only he would bear the keys to that weapon's operation... And you, Fontaine—you are the only one who would not know any differently. You are the only one who would have any reason to believe nothing had changed."
Diane didn't understand what she meant, but from the growing look of horror on Jack's face, she understood its significance.
"Give it up, Fontaine! You cannot control him any longer—that power was taken from you long ago!"
Atlas's snarl had only twisted into a deeper scowl, into deeper lines of rage. But eventually he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled his shoulders.
When he looked at Jack and Diane again, it was with a deadly stillness that filled Diane with the very same fear Suchong must have felt.
"Guess there ain't no point in keepin' up this little masquerade."
At once, Atlas's pleasant Irish lilt had vanished from his voice, replaced by a slow, coarse Bronx accent. Diane felt her fear ratchet up into panic, for his voice was one she still recognized. Without a doubt, it was the voice of Frank Fontaine.
"Lucky you, having Mother Goose on your side." Atlas—no, Fontaine—gestured loosely at Jack with his gun. "But you ain't that lucky. Ain't nobody that lucky wherever Tenenbaum's gotten herself involved. Just you wait—she'll have a knife in your back sooner or later."
"You..."
It was the only response Jack seemed able to muster; Diane was just close enough to see the gun shaking in his grip.
"Unless, of course, I put you down sooner than that. Hell, kid, I'd be doin' you a favor."
Her attention snapped back to Fontaine. His own gun was pointed, no longer loosely, in Jack's direction.
"I mean, seein' as how you're no good to me—and if I had to wager a guess, I'd say you're no good to your old man either, huh? Or else he woulda used you to stop me by now."
Fontaine laughed, while Jack remained frozen. Diane had to do something.
She was the one who'd gotten Jack into all this in the first place. If she'd never given him that letter—if she'd only warned him when she found him that day, about what Atlas had been planning... She had to do something.
"Apologies for wastin' your time and all that. But at least you had fun while it lasted, right?"
"No!"
It took all of her strength and then some, but Diane managed to launch herself at Fontaine. She couldn't tackle him to the ground as she'd hoped, but she got a solid enough grip on him to try wresting away his gun.
"Hey, what the fuck do you think you're doing—"
He tried to kick her away, but she locked her leg around his instead; he yanked at her hair, but she only twisted her head to bite down on his arm, clawed at his face with one hand and reached for the gun in his grip with the other—
"Get the fuck off me!"
The loud bang as he pulled the trigger rang in her ears and nearly made her shriek in surprise, if she hadn't been so determined to keep hanging on. No cry followed, and she felt a pang of relief at the thought that the bullet must have missed Jack—but there was a metallic noise instead, the metallic noise of a ricochet, and the bellowing roar that ensued caused that pang to vanish in an instant.
She twisted her head again, just enough to see the Big Daddy in the distance—to see the portholes in its helm glowing a bright, dangerous red, to hear the metallic whine and rev as its mighty drill began to spin.
"Oh, hell."
Fontaine's gun fell to the floor as he turned his hands to a different purpose: shoving away Diane as much as he possibly could.
The Big Daddy would be upon them in mere seconds, perhaps less than that, but Diane didn't know which of them it would pursue.
She had to stop Atlas—she had to stop Fontaine from killing Jack, no matter what it took.
There was only one thing she could do.
"What the fuck are you doing?! You crazy fucking broad, get off me—"
She held onto Fontaine as tightly as she could, holding him in place with all her might.
When the Big Daddy thundered in their direction, when the revving noise of the drill was mere feet from her ear, Diane could only pray she'd made the right choice.