A/N: This is a part of the story that I would love to see in the Bioshock 1st-person game format…

Edit: This chapter made me want to rip my hair out. It got all janked up when I put it on my USB, so I had to rewrite the majority of it… Something about the Mac computers at my college messed it up. So you'll probably see a slight change in style halfway through.

On another note, I have a few more chapters piled up that I'm going to try to upload. They should last until summer break, when I won't have to worry about school studies. But, as you could probably imagine, college studies and personal story ambitions are getting in the way, hehe… But I'm so close to the end, I'm determined to finish this story. I just don't want to push it when I don't feel like it, because that's how you get really lifeless chapters.

19

Sapphire's Abandoned Laboratory

It was dark inside the laboratory. Most of the lights didn't appear to work. Some source of power was still being pumped into the building for whatever reason, making the functioning lights flicker tenaciously in an attempt to stay alight. It felt like the entire building itself was fighting to keep itself alive, despite its abandonment.

The airlock preparation room that Jack and Holly entered had one jammed Securis door that led to the dark hallway beyond. The duo walked down the hall, tired enough from their recent journey to let the flickering lights and distant sounds of lapping water creep into their minds, making them jumpy. The building had an air of uneasiness to it, but, as far as Jack could actually tell, the laboratory was empty. Perhaps that's what made it more eerie.

Holly led the way down the dark hallway. She actually seemed to have a vague idea of where they needed to go. Jack was fine with that. He was already on edge, and tired from their walk outside. He would just be glad to get the Plasmid and leave so that they could rest before heading to wherever Sapphire was hiding. Besides, he was lugging around a bucket of cold sea-water, in which the two remaining ADAM slugs pulsed lazily – Holly had snatched the bucket out of one of the storage lockers in the airlock preparation room so that she could fill it with water before getting out of her diving suit. It definitely beat carrying the slugs with bare hands. But it didn't make it any easier to walk.

Some of the doors in the hallway weren't labelled. A lot of them didn't even open. 'Examination', 'Surgery', and 'Research' were among the few of the doors that had plaques still stamped beside and above them. It appeared that this wasn't the one-man operation that Jack had initially thought it was – the building was suited to fit an entire working staff of anything from researchers to custodians. There was even some sort of canteen area, which was long closed-off.

"How did you even find this place…?" Jack asked, shifting the bucket from one hand to another. He kept his voice low, despite knowing they were the only ones in the building.

"I was roaming around outside in a diving suit, and I just… stumbled upon it." Holly, too, kept her voice relatively low. She paused near the end of the hallway, which seemed to open into a large room that was dimly lit up by something. The light source was coming from the floor. "I almost fell into the crevice, actually." She added sheepishly.

Jack stopped beside her. He watched her turn around on the spot, looking back into the darkness of the hallway. "What's wrong?" He growled, suddenly feeling endangered.

"Nothing, I just…" Holly grimaced slightly. "I… can't remember which part of the building she stored the Plasmid in. It was a long time ago that I came here, and a lot of the rooms look the same."

Setting the metal bucket down, Jack peered into the lit room. "I can check this area if you want to look through that hallway." He offered.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. The faster we can get out of here, the better." Not to mention he was dying to get out of that hallway…

Holly looked reluctant. "Well, be careful, then."

Jack scoffed. "When am I not?"

"Is that a trick question?"

With an amused shake of the head, Jack headed into the other room. "Yell if you need me," he said over his shoulder, eager to move out of the dark hallway and into a lit room.

The room was quite spacious, with four large, circular tanks built into the floor. Two of them had a flat, glass sheet covering the top, but the glass on the other two were broken. One of the tanks barely had any glass left. A small, steel grate walkway, elevated about ten feet off the ground by thick metal poles, ran between the four tanks. It was some sort of observational deck.

Jack curiously walked towards the tank with the least glass covering its opening. Inside, sea water gently beat against the smooth stone of its confines. Even though there were lights at the bottom on each tank, it was difficult to see through the opaque water. Jack couldn't help but wonder if these tanks once held the Splicers he and Holly had encountered on the ocean floor.

Shuddering, Jack leaned away from the tank he was squinting into. He could practically feel how cold the water was from where he stood, and it wasn't in his best interests to accidentally slip in.

Underfoot, glass from the tanks crunched and cracked. The sound echoed off the walls of the large room, nearly startling Jack, reminding him of how isolated and empty the building was. Every little sound was capable of this. It was certainly not the nicest feeling.

Something on the other side of the room caught Jack's eye. When he moved, light from the tanks glinted on a sign that hung over a strange machine that jutted out of the wall. Jack frowned at the sight of it, wandering in its direction.

The sign read 'EVE DISPENSER'. It was a strange machine which Jack had never come across before. But, upon further inspection, he realized the EVE inside was completely free. Glancing around, he spotted another machine just like it on the other side of the room. Whatever the experiments were that took place in the area, lots of EVE was obviously required. Regardless, Jack gladly took the chance to stock up on EVE.

Once he'd taken what he wanted from the strange vending machines, Jack continued to carefully move throughout the room. There were large double doors at one end of the room that Jack decided to investigate. They slid on runners into the wall when Jack neared them, and what was on the other side took Jack a little bit by surprise.

Jack's first reaction was to duck out of the doorway. It looked like the ocean was about to crash violently into the room, to sweep him up in its cold waters. Jack had to look again to understand what he was seeing.

A large dome was created to encase the walkway that led to another set of double doors. The glass, however, was barely parted by any metal rib supports, giving the illusion that the ocean wasn't being held back by anything. Coral glowed in the distance, plants danced with the movement of the water, and large rocks dotted various areas of the sandy floor. From what Jack could see, the glass tunnel was in some sort of extension of the cave that Holly and Jack and entered from.

Though the tunnel was serene, Jack didn't feel comfortable in it – his first exposure to it startled him a little bit too much. He hurried through the second set of doors, not sure of what to expect.

Jack was greeted by yet another wall of water – This time, it stood behind a large, sturdy, wooden desk. The deep blue curved walls that met each side of the window held shelves covered in miscellany items. Books, some small statuettes, and the likes. There were two wooden doors that seemingly led to storage on either side of the room completed the circular office.

He took a few minutes to poke around on the shelves, flipping through the leather-bound books, squinting at the statuettes of sea creatures, large cats, and horses. He made his way to the desk, pausing in front of it. A sketchpad lay on the desk, slightly obscured by some legal papers. He moved them to look at the sketchpad in its entirety. He furrowed his brow at it curiously.

The exposed page of the sketchpad had a pencil drawing of recognizable figure: It was one of the Splicers that he and Holly had encountered. There were several neatly hand-written notes beside the sketch. An arrow pointed to the head of the Splicer, with the words Gymnothorax Javanicus written in cursive beside it. Another arrow pointed to the bottom half of the thing, with words that read simply as Homo Sapien.

Jack glared at the sketch for a moment longer before turning his back to it. The sight of it was enough to bring back the memory of raw fear from looking into the eyes of one of those things, the fear that came with being so close that you could see every individual needle-sharp tooth. He moved away from the desk, shuddering as he headed for one of the two doors in the office.

He chose the left door, where he discovered that the inside of the room was a lot larger than expected. Inside, shelves were lined neatly in several rows, containing mostly cardboard storage bins of what Jack could only assume were full of papers.

Near the door, there was a bin left ajar without care. An Accu-Vox stuck out of the tote, as if shoved in last-minute.

By nature, Jack pressed the play button on it.

The whirred to a start, and, after pained seconds, a voice sounded that Jack new he'd heard before. It was Cherry Optkinz, the female with a stuffy voice and slow way of speaking. They'd heard her voice on an Accu-Vox when they first entered Persephone.

"Well…" Optkins started in her paced tone. She sounded as though she had some water caught in her throat as she spoke, and, when she paused, she panted heavily, sounding both in pain and out of breath. Water splashed gently in the background of the recording, suggesting she might've been in one of the tanks or something as she recorded. "I've been in this tank for so long, I don't think I'd remember how to walk if I ever got out…" Another pained gasp. "M-my nails… have fallen off. It didn't hurt that much. My hair… fell out… last week, too… Now I've got these... boils. All over. Boils, Sapphire. I can't breathe when I'm… not in the water… And I can barely see. Lady, what more do you want… from me?" A sudden flash of anger raised Cherry Optkins' voice. "I ain't never going back… home, am I? Howm'I supposed to go back to a normal life… when I ain't got no nails or hair? When I can't see?" She gulped for air heavily, and then announced in a dark, yet excruciatingly weak, voice: "Fuck you and your… fucking experiments. I quit."

The Accu-Vox clicked to a halt, leaving Jack frowning at it. He casually ran his thumb over his nails, wincing slightly at the thought of what Cherry Optkins went through. Eager to get away from the recording, he scanned the room quickly and moved onto the other door in Sapphire's office.

As soon as the door slid open, Jack had to pause and let the feeling of relief wash over him. It wasn't one that happened often, and he'd like to revel in it.

In this room, not even hidden away in a tote bin, were several different kinds of Plasmids strewn throughout the four shelves in the room. On one of the shelves, there were Plasmid bottles full of a glowing green liquid, with Instant Oxygen on their labels. The next shelf was a lot fuller, and had a Plasmid with a glowing yellow liquid in it, the bottle reading Feline Grace. One more over read Shadow Dancer, and was full of a deep, smoky, black liquid that seemed to move all on its own inside the bottle. Jack examined all of the Plasmids carefully, reading the papers that had been taped onto each of the shelves.

Instant Oxygen had been discontinued due to security issues, by demand of Ryan, and because of 'biological confliction' – the note said to refer to the Optkins case. Feline Grace had been discontinued due to the 'reversion of the human mind'. It apparently put chronic users into a feral, animalistic state. And the Shadow Dancer simple hadn't been distributed. The note didn't read why.

No matter. Jack and Holly were only there for the Instant Oxygen Plasmid.

Jack returned to the Instant Oxygen shelf, noticing for the first time that an Accu-Vox had been hung on the far end of the shelf. He hesitated. He was still uneasy from the last recording. Nonetheless, he laid the Accu-Vox flat on one of the shelves, cautiously starting the recording.

It whirred to life, and greeted Jack with Sapphire's voice. "Cherry Optkins died today." Sapphire sounded mentally defeated, speaking with a slightly less authoritative tone than usual. Her voice, though stressed, was younger sounding. "The Plasmid she had been using damaged her brain, and confused her biological makeup. The only condolence we have in her death is that she probably wasn't aware it was happening when it hit. I doubt she even knew up from down, at that point." She let a pause stretch on for a little while before continuing. "The boils that covered her skin began bursting. Minutes later, the skin started peeling and falling off. Her heart failed before she could sink to the bottom of the tank. The other… specimen… then tried pick at her corpse. We had them contained as to allow someone to retrieve Cherry Optkins from the bottom of the tank. Unfortunately, her body was degrading at an extremely high rate. By the time someone got to her, she was falling apart."

The young, tired-sounding Sapphire breathed in sharply. "The gymnothorax genes seem to reject female hosts. I haven't figured out why, yet. I thought it was just the gymnothorax funebris genes, at first, but, after having giant moray eels imported for this experiment, I can say that it's just the gymnothorax genes in general that reject female hosts. While the gymnothorax javanicus genes better hold the weight of the human form, it doesn't change the fact that all the women who chronically use the Plasmid end up falling to pieces at the bottom of the tank." She paused again, this time in quiet contemplation. "I suppose this will just have to marketed towards men…"

The recording ended with an abrupt click, leaving Jack in silence once again. He looked down at the Plasmid in his hand, horrified.

A hand reached across Jack front, grabbing one of the Plasmids. "I'm not too worried about it…" Holly announced nonchalantly. Apparently, she heard the whole thing. Jack hadn't heard her arrive. He hadn't even heard the door open. "I'm not using it chronically. I'll be fine."

"Is that your assumption?" Jack growled, looking back at Holly.

"I'm willing to risk it." She reassured dryly. Her eyes flicked over the silenced Accu-Vox briefly, and then to the Plasmid in her hands. "If you've got everything you need, I think we should get going. We have what we came here for."

Jack pursed his lips, but said nothing. He knew there was no point arguing with Holly. He couldn't change her mind. He followed her out, walking behind her, heading to the glass tunnel that led back to the tank room.

"Oh," Holly suddenly said, remembering something out of the blue. She paused in front of the doors to the tunnel, facing Jack as she quickly dug into one of the pockets on her utility belt. "I found something you might be interested in…" She mumbled, fishing through a pouch. "I found it out in one of the rooms."

But Jack wasn't listening. He had his eyes trained on the tunnel ahead of them, his eyes wide. He gripped the shoulders of the oblivious Holly, turning her to face the tunnel. She started to complain, but cut short when she saw what Jack was trying to show her.

Lining the glass on both sides of the tunnel, Sapphire's Splicers stared right back at Jack and Holly. Their beady little eyes focused with every movement the duo made. A few of the pressed their hands against the glass in what looked like anticipation when they saw the duo.

There couldn't have been more than twelve. In fact, there were about six or seven of them. They all had a very specific interest in the duo, and it scared Jack to wonder why. Their scarred, deformed faces followed Jack and Holly as they slowly and cautiously made their way out of the tunnel.

"What was it you wanted to show me…?" Jack whispered as they walked, keeping their eyes on the Splicers.

"It's not important…" Holly breathed absentmindedly. "Why are they so interested in us…?"

Jack shook his head. "Maybe… they're hungry." He felt like he'd just wandered into the world's most terrifying zoo.

A few more uneasy steps, and they were out of there, the door closing behind them. Holly let out a long exhale. "Wow…"

Jack nodded strongly in agreement. "Let's… not do that again. Ever."

"They might be out waiting for us, though…" Holly frowned. In the giant tank room, she climbed the observation deck between all of the tanks, glancing down at Jack as they spoke.

"Then we could probably stay here for a little while. At least we know it's safe." Glass crunched under foot as Jack walked.

"I guess so…" She shrugged, stopping near the middle of the tanks, resting her elbows on the railing. "I have to admit, though, that I'm not a huge fan of this place. I'd rather not stay here for too long, if we don't have to."

"Believe me, I agree…" Jack muttered. He hated laboratories, for very obvious reasons.

Holly stared down at the tanks below curiously. "Those things were supposed to be in these tanks." She stated thoughtfully. "Did they get out, or did Sapphire just let them go?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if Sapphire let them go…" Jack muttered. Louder, he said "I can't help but wonder what urged her to make those things, anyways."

"Jack…?"

"It should have been obvious from the start that it was a bad idea…"

"Jack!"

Jack looked up at Holly, eyebrows raised. "Yeah?"

Her eyes were wide, and she had her hands out in front of her for emphasis. "Take… a few steps away from that tank…"

The Ryan's brows lowered instantly, and his attention snapped to the tank. He took a step away from it. "Why…?"

Holly let out a small, anxious squeal. She shook her hands at him, urging him to move back again. "Away from the tank!"

The tank let out a dense thudding noise, like something hit one of the sides of the shaft. At this, Jack was a little more persuaded to move.

But he was just a hair too slow.

Something erupted from the tank in an explosion of water, breaking the rest of the glass that had been covering it. Jack barely had time to register what was happening when he felt himself being yanked towards the tank by the front of his sweater.

The large, purple, cancerous Splicer that had first made contact with Jack out on the ocean floor had been the thing that lunged out of the tank, gripping the front Jack's sweater, and was now dragging Jack into the water.

Holly let out another squeal, calling out Jack's name. Jack only grunted loudly in response, trying to struggle against the strong force that was receding back into its tank with Jack hooked on its talons.

Jack hit the lip of the tank and felt himself starting to go over. Instinctively, his hands shot out, and he held onto anything he could as he fell into the water. He had his arms wrapped over the lip of the tank, the Splicer's talons twisted and caught awkwardly in his sweater. It tried to pull its hand back, and, by extension, Jack. But it had been caught in a hard angle, forcing it to slash at the sweater to free its other hand.

"A little help!" Jack barked as he felt the talons graze his chest. The fabric of his sweater tore from the collar all the way down to the hem, letting him slip it off one arm at a time He felt the Splicer free itself, and he took this as an opportunity to climb out of the icy cold water. He heard Holly running across the observation deck and back down the stairs, heading for Jack.

He held a hand out to her for help, swinging one leg over the lip of the tank. She reached out for him, only to flinch back when he loudly cried out in pain. Jack looked down at his leg, which now had two sharp rows of teeth sunken into it, and then back at Holly. Before either of them could say anything, Jack was back in the water, only managing to snag a glimpse of a terrified Holly stepping away from the tank in shock.

The frigid water enveloped Jack from head to toe in seconds, filling his mouth and nose, providing an extra cause for panic.

He reached out blindly, groping for anything to help him before it was too late. He was afraid he'd be dragged to the bottom of the tank where he would just drown. In that moment, several things cross his mind. The first, obviously, being the thought of dying. The second was that his children would be orphaned – again. The third was that Sapphire would probably get away with her plans. And the fourth was a constant stream of incoherent curses as the pain of something strongly gripping his leg with its teeth shot through him over and over.

Before Jack could get too panicky, though, his hand made contact with something that gave him a brief flicker of hope.

A ladder had been built into the wall of the tank. It felt like it extended the whole way around the shaft, which was another slight relief. So Jack held onto one of the tiled rungs, feeling his chest start to hurt from holding his breath. He determinedly started pulling himself up the rungs, feeling the Splicer trying to pull him back under.

Angrily, Jack tried kicking at the Splicer with his free foot, still holding onto the ladder as tightly as he could. His foot made contact several times, but it didn't do much. He could exactly move his foot with much rapidity while submerged in icy waters.

He kept ascending the waters, trying very hard to blot of the pain that overtook him. He managed to barely reach the surface of the water, where he stretched his neck out as far as he could to get at least his mouth out of the water.

He gasped loudly for breath.

Holly heard Jack break the surface of the water. She hurried back to the tank, sticking her hands into the water, trying to help Jack out. "Come on!" She grunted, trying to leverage him out of the water. Unfortunately, she was like a kitten wrestling a full-grown Pitbull. The weight of the sodden Jack and the strength of the Splicer working against them both were too much. She couldn't get Jack out of the water – at least, not while the Splicer was still attached to him.

"OK…" She breathed, shaking the water off her arms, frowning down at the gasping Jack, whose face was now contorting into an expression of intense concentration. Holly snapped her palms out at the water, trying to send tendrils of shadow down towards the Splicer. If she could just get it off of Jack, she'd be able to get him out of the water.

But the shadows weren't complying. They didn't even leave her hands a centimeter before dissipating into the air. Confused, she tried again and again, only to be failed over and over.

Holly started panicking. She couldn't do anything. Her own Plasmid had failed, and her small frame betrayed her. What else could she do, other than jump into the water and throw herself at the Splicer as a distraction? She was afraid she'd have to watch Jack die.

Holly chewed apprehensively on her knuckles, pacing in front of the tank with urgent thoughts running through her head.

And then she heard it.

From the other side of the room, she heard someone loudly clearing their throat. She nearly jumped, expecting more Splicers. But when she saw the source of the noise, she knew she was safe, for the most part.

The copper-haired twins stood on the other end of the room, standing side by side, in the same poses Holly saw them in before. She narrowed her eyes at them, all sorts of questions whizzing through her brain. She didn't get a chance to ask any, though.

The twins stepped in opposite directions of each other, revealing something they had been standing in front of, obscuring with their bodies. It glinted behind an emergency glass case in the wall. At the sight of it, Holly breathed in almost cheerfully, a slight smile flickering across her face before she ran to the other side of the room, practically dismissing the twins.

The Splicer violently wrenched on Jack's leg, causing him to cry out in pain. This was a mistake, as the Splicer immediately hauled Jack back under the surface of the water. He practically breathed in a mouthful of the freezing water.

Jack continued to hold onto the rungs of the ladder, now just two or three rungs below the surface of the water. He was started to get lightheaded, both from blood loss and from the lack of air. On top of it all, his fingers were starting to grow numb and achy. His eyes hurt from the cold, and he couldn't feel his toes. The numbness didn't stop the pain in his leg from soaring through the rest of his body, though.

Why was he still holding on? It occurred to him that Holly might not even be trying to help him, or that she just couldn't. It could be that he was just holding on, painfully prolonging a cold death. He decided that didn't matter. He was he so determined that he'd hold on until he passed out. The moment he gives up would be the moment he has no conscious choice.

Just as Jack was weakly going back and forth in his mind, he heard something zip past his ear, feeling it displace the water by his arm and towards his leg as it went by. The grip on his leg suddenly loosened, but didn't let go. Seconds later, another thing shot by him, and this time he heard it make contact. Whatever it was, it hit the Splicer hard enough for something to audibly crack.

Jack's leg was now freed.

It took him a moment to register this, and then another few seconds to push himself to climb the rest of the ladder.

When his head broke the surface of the water yet again, he gulped desperately for air, coughing and gagging violently. He threw his arms of the rim of the shaft, trying to get the rest of his body to follow.

Hands hooked themselves under Jack's arms, pulling him the rest of the way out of the tank. He flopped over onto his back as soon as he was out of the tank and on the ceramic floor. He knew he had to have been lying on a bed of glass, but didn't much care. He was alive and breathing in air, not water. That's all that mattered.

Holly, who had helped him out of the water, was dragging him as far away from the tank as she could get him. Near the tank, Jack spotted some sort of long, bulky gun. As his head got lighter and lighter, and the chances of his vision clearing becoming less and less likely, he realized it was some sort of spear gun.

Jack coughed until he threw up, already shivering and shaking. He vaguely remembered thanking Holly before finally passing out.