I actually didn't plan for 15 to be like this but the concept for this chapter was actually inspired by a reviewer.

Jack III

'How the hell has this become my life?' Jack asked himself.

A week... No, a day ago he'd been a decently well-off college student from a good family who'd never had anything particularly exciting or out-of-the-ordinary ever happen to him. Now he was in a city at the bottom of the ocean, shooting lightning out of his hand, and fighting off hordes of mindless... zombies? That was as good enough name for them as any.

'Ma, Pa... I swear I'm not losing my soul down here. I'm just trying to survive,' he half-thought and half-prayed. Jack pulled a pack of shotgun shells from the dead slicer's pocket, tucking it in his own. If there was anything he'd learned from his time down here, it was that you could never have too much ammo.

"Don't you have anything helpful to say?"

'Huh?' Jack looked up from what he was doing, turning to Birdie. "Did you say something?"

The young woman tore her eyes away from the empty spot on the wall she'd been staring at to look him deep in the eye. Once more, Jack found himself once-again transfixed but just how blue Birdie's eyes were -blue and clear and deep as the crystal clear as the lakes in Crawford Country. And the longer he looked, the deeper he felt himself sinking.

'At least something nice came from this whole mess.'

"Nothing, just... talking to myself," Birdie eventually said, breaking the silent connection. She shook her head, nodding toward the door. "Let's go, the emergency bathysphere should be docked ahead. It will take you to Neptune's Bounty."

"What will you do once we get there?" he asked.

Jack once heard that, in desperate situations, people can get emotionally attached to people they barely know easily. That they latch onto someone or something to hold onto their sanity, a life raft in a sea of madness. Jack didn't like to think he was going mad but, well, there was only so much comfort Atlas' disembodied voice could give. For all Birdie kept her walls up and secrets close to the chest, at least she was actually there! He could see her, they could have conversations, and, if nothing else, at least she could watch Jack's back in a fight.

He didn't want to lose that.

"Are you still planning on splitting off to head to Arcadia?"

Jack wasn't stupid. He knew Birdie had her own agenda, her own reason for being there, but he still hoped that maybe...

"...I don't know," Birdie said.

The way she said it... Something about her tone and saw Birdie seemed to stare off into space... It was like... like she knew more than he did. It was as if the woman had seen this all play out before and didn't want to spoil anything for him.

'What do you know that I don't?'

"I'd be happy to have you come along," he eventually said, leaving it at that. Something told Jack that pushing Birdie wouldn't get him anywhere.

Time passed differently in Rapture. With no clocks or sun to keep track of things, Jack had no way of knowing if the walk to the emergency bathysphere dock lasted minutes, hours, or even days. All he knew was that they arrive far too soon for his liking.

"Shit" Birdie hissed. She tugged some wires out from under the bathysphere's control panel, "This doesn't look good."

"Does that mean we'll have to find another way?" he asked, keeping one eye on the door even as he watched Birdie fiddle with the machine.

"Damnit! One of Ryan's men must have sabotaged it," Atlas said, finally speaking up again after a surprisingly long period of silence. "He knew I'd be coming for him. The man is getting desperate now."

"No... I don't think anyone messed with it. I just think this is an older model that no one has been taking care of. Some of the wires are loose and pieces are starting to rust. I think I can patch it up though, give me a minute."

"That's good." It occurred to Jack that this was the first time Atlas had been wrong about something. Ryan may have been a powerful man but even he couldn't control time and natural wear on a machine. 'Atlas can't be right about everything, he's only human.'

"So I guess this is where we say goodbye then?" Jack asked.

"I supposed so," Birdie said, never looking up from the wires she was fiddling with. Despite having no proof, Jack could swear that she was going out of her way not to look at him.

"I'm sure our paths will cross again," the young woman continued, still not looking at him. "There-" she reconnected two wires and slammed the panel close, "-that's the best I can do. It's not exactly brand new but it'll get you to where you need to be."

Jack started to say something when the radio crackled to life again.

"C'mon, boyo, I know you like her but you've got to get a move on. My family doesn't have the luxury of waiting until you sort out your puppy love."

Jack wanted to protest that this wasn't anything like that; Birdie was beautiful, sure, but this was about not wanting to lose a partner and ally in surviving the bloody chaos that was Rapture. Hell, Birdie was probably better in a fight than he was, surely Atlas could see the benefit in keeping her around!

"Now, would you kindly get a move on?"

Legs seeming to move on their own, Jack hopped up into the bathysphere. At least this time he could still talk, "Well, it is a damn shame that you aren't coming along. I think we make a good team. It would be easier for both to do what we need if we stay together."

Birdie shook her head and Jack hoped he wasn't imagining the regret in her eyes. "It's better this way."

'So that's it then?' Jack smiled sadly, waving as the bathysphere door started to close. 'I just wish-'

"Wait," Birdie said, stopping the closing door. "I'm coming."

"Thatta girl," Jack grinned, scootching to the side, trying to make room. With the two of them, it would be a tight fit. "Welcome aboard."

He couldn't put into words how happy he was that Birdie was staying with him. Maybe he could justify it in just wanting a partner to help survive Rapture. But it was more than that and, deep inside, Jack knew it. Deep inside, Jack felt that Birdie was a kindred spirit.

'It's like we've met before.'

"It's just because you were right about saying together being the smartest course of action," Birdie said, trying to find a place to fit. "Now, let's set a course of Port Neptune. Move over."

About that... No matter how far into the corner Jack pushed himself, there was no place for anyone, even a slender young woman like Birdie to site.

Except... "Um, I don't really have anywhere else to move to. You'll have to sit in my... um..."

Birdie cocked her eyebrow at him, picking up the implications of his words. Jack felt his face light up red when the young woman plopped herself down in his lap without hesitation or embarrassment. Her hair brushed up against Jack's mouth and hair. It didn't smell great, he wasn't going to lie, but something about it felt nice all the same.

"Don't get any ideas," Birdie said, a hint of humor in her voice as she settle in.

Jack focused very hard on keeping his hands somewhere appropriate as the bathysphere disembarked into the water. His folks raised a gentleman, after all. "Wouldn't dream of it."

The bottom of the ocean was very cold and Birdie's body was a good source of heat. Halfway through the journey, Jack risked warming his hands on Birdie's slender waist; when they weren't immediately slapped away, he let them settle there. Over the top of Birdie's head -which wasn't very hard to see at all; he had an easy six inches on her- Jack watched the dark buildings of Rapture float by. In this moment, the city looked beautiful. In this moment, Jack could almost picture the utopia of artists, scholars, and free-thinkers that Andrew Ryan had promised.

He wondered if Birdie was thinking the same thing. She talked like she lived in the city during its prime. Was it hard for her to see how far it had fallen?

"Can you tell me about where we're going?" Jack asked, hoping to break the silence. It was almost as eerie as the silent ocean floor.

After a moment, Birdie nodded. "Well, I only ever visited Port Neptune once. But it is- was one of the most important places in Rapture."

"Why?"

"Because it was where most of the city's fishing businesses were located. Since seafood used to be a big part of the average Rapture citizen's diet, the port, and the related businesses were vital to the cities stability and survival."

'That makes sense,' Jack thought. 'It'd be hard to keep livestock in an underwater city. You could maybe get away with chickens and maybe some pigs but anything else would need too much space and resources.'

It was amusing to think that here, of all places, that his agricultural schooling would come up. Jack took a moment to enjoy the image of cows roaming the seabed in specialized diving suits before tuning back into what Birdie was saying.

She twisted around to look at him in a way that made Jack bite his lower lip to avoid letting out a grunt. "You really don't know anything about this place?"

Did he?

For as little as Jack knew about the hidden little details of Rapture, part of him felt... at home here. It wasn't so much that he felt comfortable here. After the past couple of... days? Hours? Jack wasn't sure he'd ever be comfortable, ever be able to stop looking over his shoulder or waiting to be attacked whenever he turned a corner, again. No, it was more like the city's stink had already managed to work its way into Jack's bones, just as his own blood had worked its way into the city.

He looked out at the city before them and wondered how much blood Rapture had claimed.

"Only what I've learned from audio files, scattered papers, and what- people have told me," Jack said, noticing how a few loose curls of Birdie's hair blew with his breath. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Yes, the port eventually became part of the city's downfall. Smugglers, led by Frank Fontaine, used the port and turned into a massive fight between Fontaine's men and Andrew Ryan's Security -a conflict that would eventually boil over into a civil war for control of the city. As it turns out, a massive number of citizens -both lower and upper class- were involved in the smuggling ring. In the end, Rapture Central Council made smuggling a crime punishable by hanging. But, soon enough, not even that was enough for Ryan and he started having the bodies of smugglers put on display as a public warning."

"Yikes," Jack said. 'Damn you, Ryan. I know I shouldn't be surprised after everything you told me but I thought we left gibbeting back in the Dark Ages.' He continued, "I've heard some nasty things about Ryan but this Fontaine sounds like a character too."

"..."

"Birdie?" Jack tilted his head to the side, trying to see the young woman's face. His grip on her waist tightened, ever so slightly, just to keep her upright. "Are you alright?"

"...I'm fine. And, yeah, Fontaine is a monster in his own right."

'What is rattling around in your head, Birdie? And what aren't you telling me?'

"Now you've had the pleasure of Andrew Ryan's company. He's the one who built this place, and he's the one who run it into the ground. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Maybe he went mad. Maybe the power got to him. Maybe he just decided he didn't like people. Whichever way you slice it, good men died."

Jack felt himself cringe and nearly nodded in agreement as he took in the decaying corpse of a smuggler hanging before him. Atlas wasn't the most... patient of men -not that Jack could blame him, not with his family on the line- but he was right about the iron fist Ryan had on Rapture, nor the brutal terror that he brought down on anyone who'd defied him.

"Fuck," Jack whispered, grip tight on his shotgun. In the short time since he acquired it, the thing might as well have become his childhood teddy bear for all he relied on it for comfort. "For someone who claims to one a land without any gods, Ryan sure seems to have thought himself above everyone else."

"Well, you aren't wrong there," Birdie said, looking around.

The young woman had her own armory, far more expansive than Jack's own. Perhaps that was a side effect for living and surviving in the mad city for much longer but her crossbow raised his eyebrow in its unusualness. Still, it must have been reliable, by else would Birdie lug the large, awkward contraption around?

The two made their way through the ruined bathysphere station, watching every step they took. Jack couldn't help but notice how Birdie skirted around the dead Big Daddy, eyes never leaving it. It was almost as if she was expecting it to come to life and attack them.

'Which, admittedly, would be far from the strangest thing I've seen since the plane crashed.'

"When is it ever?" Birdie said out of nowhere.

Jack looked up from the ADAM trail he was studying, "What?"

But Birdie just shook her head and offered him a cigarette, "Nothing. I don't know what we're going to meet out there. Are you ready?"

There she went again, talking to ghosts and then denying it. Jack wouldn't blame or think poorly of his newfound partner in survival for being a little... lost. What else would you expect from someone stuck in this hell on Earth? But, then again, Jack also couldn't imagine it was easy to admit you were mad. He certainly didn't want to think he was losing it down here either.

So he put on a strong front and gave his most charming grin, taking the smoke and popping it in his mouth. "Happy to be here, Birdie."

Jack slapped his pocket's trying to find his lighter. Some bullets... a small heath pack... the flask of booze he'd managed to sneak on the plane... but no-

Birdie reached up and lit his cigarette with a banged-up metal lighter. Their eyes met and Jack felt his heart skip a beat.

"Well... You better not disappoint," Birdie said, eyes half-lidded and voice sultry low.

Jack felt his jaw drop, the smoke nearly falling out. 'It just based attraction missed with some trauma bonding. Keep you're head out of the gutter. You're here for a mission.'

"...Wouldn't dream of it."

"Good."

Birdie turned and walked away without another word, leaving a dumbfounded Jack behind. After a moment, he shook out his head, "C'mon, your head in the game! This is not the time or place for to be picking up chickies."

He followed Birdie into one of the outside corridors, getting a lovely view of dead, rotting men wrapped up by kelp outside on of the sea windows.

"Jesus, this place is a graveyard," Jack swore, cursing Andrew Ryan for all the horror he'd cause innocent people.

Birdie frowned, "Just like the rest of the city."

But they couldn't dwell on the loss of life. They pressed forward through the half-destroyed corridors, staying quiet so as not to draw attention. In the short time they'd been together, Jack had come to realize that Birdie preferred to avoid direct confrontations whenever possible. While she wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in between a splicer's eyes if she had to, Birdie vastly preferred sneaking by enemies or sniping them from the shadows.

Their good luck of not meeting any resistance couldn't last forever though. When they rounded a corner into a partially flooded hall, Jack flinched when he spotted a large, distorted shadow of a figure crouched over something cast on the wall before them.

"What's that?" Jack hissed to draw Birdie's attention.

At his voice, the shadow shifted, undoubtedly becoming aware of their presence. "What crawls in my garden?"

Jack flinched again. The voice was human -which alone was odd enough down here- but there was something so... twisted about it!

'Uncanny valley. Something recognizable as human but not close enough to completely pass.'

"Be ready," Birdie warned, raising her own handgun.

'Don't know how much good that'll do,' he thought, stepping in front of her with his shotgun raised.

This position of protection lasted all of five seconds before Birdie stepped up to his side. "That is the most coherent thing I've ever heard a splicer say."

Good, he wasn't the only one who noticed that.

"Same," he nodded. "It makes you wonder about how much humanity is left inside them. Think... whoever that was is still there?"

Splicers were tragic monsters. Monsters in their insanity, hunger, and violent rage. And tragic in that Jack felt so bad for them, so bad for what Ryan did to them.

"We'll find out," Birdie said.

Another corner rounded and another corpse was found, this one blood and fresh. Birdie immediately knelt down to search its pockets for anything useful -clearly, she had long since grown used to the act- but Jack was more interested in what was floating down from a hole in the ceiling.

He reached out to catch one, opening his fist to see a flower peddle. "Roses? What are roses doing here?"

Birdie glanced up at the hole in the ceiling, staring at it for a long moment before speaking again. "We shouldn't stick around." She turned to face him, "You mentioned your trying to find someone in Port Neptune. Any idea where they are?"

Jack opened his mouth to tell her about how Atlas' family was being held captive in Fontaine Fisheries but the words caught on in his throat. He remembered what Atlas said about not blabbing about his business.

'He said, "Would you kindly not go around blabbing about me and my family," so I just won't mention his family. That way I can tell Birdie what she needs to but also not betray my friend's trust,' Jack reasoned. He swallowed hard, getting ready to force the words out if needed. "Down in a submarine hidden in Fontaine Fisheries. Ryan stashed them down there."

"Really? That's strange," Birdie said, heading forward.

Jack frowned, "Why?"

Birdie shrugged, glancing back over her shoulder with those… intense blue eyes of hers. "It's just a little odd that Ryan would use his enemy's old business as a place to hold hostages."

.

.

.

'Yes… Maybe it is.'