27

Neptune's Bounty

Jack searched through the Pneumo Tubes in the Jet Postal Substation, hoping to find something of use. Of course, he found nothing, and abandoned the building, heading back into the tunnel just outside. As he walked, he felt as though he were being watched. He hesitantly glanced around, searching for the source of the feeling.

Across from him, standing on just near the Securis Door that led to the rest of Neptune's Bounty, was a Splicer of some sort. She stood somewhat unevenly, like she was disfigured or injured. From the distance between them both, Jack couldn't make out much of her, but he could see that she wore a dirtied electrician's outfit, and that her face was covered in cancerous sores. After a couple more seconds of her eyes on him, the Splicer ducked through the doorway, disappearing from sight, and that was that.

Jack was uninterested in finding out who that person was or what they wanted. It would be a waste of time, not to mention it would risk getting him into fight. What he needed to focus on was getting to Holly before she did something stupid… and he couldn't very well do that if he was caught up in some other part of Rapture.

As he walked back to the Fighting McDonagh Bar, where Jack was using a room for hiding out in, he heard someone yelling angrily.

Startled, Jack picked up the pace, arriving at the room he was holing up in, which also happened to be the source of the noises.

The door opened, and he was bombarded with sound.

"You beast!" Sapphire shouted from where she sat on the floor. Her hands were tied to a heating radiator that was now broken and cold. She writhed on the spot, unable to do much else. Her face was covered in dark, dried blood. "How dare you do this to me! What kind of man is so low?"

"I don't know if you noticed, lady, but I saved your life." Jack growled, letting the door close behind him.

"And some nerve!" Sapphire spat.

Jack shook his head in disbelief. "It's good to see that coming back from the verge of death hasn't dampened your spirits…" He muttered, turning his back to Sapphire as to lock the room's door from the inside. He was worried the sudden influx of shouting would attract unwanted attention. "If these are the thanks I'm getting for keeping your cold, little heart beating, then I should just kill you and get it over with."

"You're the one who got me in this position in the first place! If it weren't for you, I'd be perfectly fine where I was – in my home, where foreign influences aren't warping Holly's mind into that of a murderer." Sapphire's once-silky voice was now raised and hoarse. "In any case, why should I thank you for not killing me? Common sense should dictate that you keep me alive!"

"Let me dumb this down for you," Jack growled, crouching a few feet away from Sapphire. "I'm not going to kill you because of some… misplaced sense of righteousness. And you're not going to kill me because you need me. That's all there is to it."

Sapphire shifted uncomfortably. She glared at Jack through narrowed eyes. "Those are some big words for a little man…" She muttered, finally looking away.

Jack smirked, standing up and straightening his back. "That's what I figured." He gestured to her. "I have you stuck to that thing because I can't trust you. Back in your little hideout, you were stupid enough to trust me… and look where that got us?"

"This is all your fault, you know." She started strongly. One glare from Jack shot down some of her confidence. "… If you hadn't come back to Rapture, none of this would have happened. You shouldn't even be here."

Jack opened his mouth to shoot back a sharp retort, raising his finger to jab in her direction. But he was interrupted by a recognizable voice that, for once, didn't instantly fill him with rage.

"Neither should you."

Sapphire and Jack both turned their heads simultaneously. Across the room, standing near the bare bed, were the copper-haired Lutece twins. Sapphire let out a surprised yelp, and anger flashed across her face as she demanded that Jack remove them from the room.

No such luck for her.

"Oh, how the great have fallen…" Rosalind raised her chin. Her tone was, surprisingly, blatantly sarcastic. She and her brother looked down at Sapphire indignantly.

"Oh, that's just grand…" Sapphire hissed. "Are you going to invite your friend, Father Wales, here? How about Augustus Sinclair? We might as well invite Sophia Lamb, too. I don't see why not…" Her tone was dry enough to start a forest fire.

"I didn't invite them," Jack shrugged simply. "They just show up."

"She's not very amicable…" Robert hummed. It seemed to Jack that it was a comment intended mostly for him.

"Of course I'm not very amicable! Why should I be?" Sapphire snapped, unmindful of the fact that she was being very loud.

Jack walked up to the twins stiffly. There was no hint of discomfort or unease on them. In fact, they didn't radiate anything. Not even the usual curiosity. It felt like they were intentionally hiding any hint of feelings they may have had. Jack could do nothing but dismiss this. "What are you two doing here?" He asked under his voice, keeping his back to Sapphire. He could hear how displeased she was about this.

The twins tilted their heads without blinking an eye. "Just checking in on things." Rosalind answered like it was the most normal thing in the world to have shown up without warning or explanation. Thankfully, the twins also kept their voices down, not that they were speaking very loudly in the first place. "You've not killed her, yet?" Rosalind asked brazenly.

"I'm sure you know the circumstance." The Ryan automatically assumed the twins were always up to date on Jack's situations, as dictated by past trends. And he wasn't wrong in his assumption, either, because the twins nodded. "Then you can understand where I'm coming from on this."

"We're trying to, yes." Something about Robert's tone almost sounded… frustrated.

This nearly floored Jack. He was under the impression that the two people standing in front of him were some sort of all knowing, all seeing entities that knew what Jack was going to say before he said it because they knew what he's thinking. Again, as dictated by past trends. All Jack could think to say to was "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's becoming harder and harder to… understand, as it is, the situations as they come. You are entwined with unpredictable variables, resulting in foggy territory we have yet to step foot in."

"… What?"

Rosalind and Robert exchanged glances before peering over Jack's shoulders at Sapphire, who was watching the trio intensely. They returned their attention back to Jack. "Whatever is happening has happened and will happen." Rosalind explained slowly, the kind of way someone speaks to a kid when explaining that you spread jam on toast and not your hands. "This is no such case." She pointed at Sapphire. "And you can thank her."

"What are you talking about?" Sapphire demanded from her spot on the floor. "If you're going to talk about me, at least have the nerve to talk about me in my hearing range."

Jack barely glanced at her, holding a hand out to signify that she needed to shut up. To the twins, he asked "What are you talking about? What did she do?"

"It's not about what she did, necessarily." Robert and his twin didn't even acknowledge Sapphire's interjection. "It's about who she is." He paused, giving Jack a sideways look. "Haven't you wondered why you've not heard about her until this recent trip back to Rapture?"

It didn't even occur to Jack to question how they knew he'd been in Rapture before. Sure, it could have been easily deduced, but still... "No." He frowned. "But what does that have to do with anything? I don't—"

"When you helped Wayne Coleman with the security coding, you saw that every number and letter had its very specific place and job, correct?"

Jack blinked. "Y-yes. And?"

"Think of the world as something along those lines."

"Every person has a specific role to fulfill, an intended existence, if you will." Rosalind continued Robert's thought. "But, every little once in a while, an extra number or letter is added to the mix. Those are variables. They change the course of the world's events, and are unpredictable and dangerous." She pointed at Sapphire again. "She is our prime example of what a variable is. A nearly unpreventable mass of chaos."

"I hope you know that I heard that." Sapphire growled from across the room. "And I don't much appreciate the things I heard."

Again, they ignored her.

"I don't understand," Jack pressed, having a hard time wrapping his head around what the twins were saying. "She's not supposed to be here? She wasn't invited into Rapture?"

"She's not supposed to be here." Jack thought Robert was confirming his assumption, but the twin continued. "Nor there. Or anywhere. She has no purpose. She was a mistake, in every sense of the meaning."

"Now you're just being plain rude…" Sapphire muttered.

Jack felt somewhat inclined to agree with her. The twins were making less sense than usual, and seemed more bitter towards Sapphire than necessary. He glanced back at the woman, who was glaring down at the scuffed flooring beneath her. Jack jumped when he heard Rosalind's voice in his ear.

"All it'd take is a single bullet."

He turned back, and the twins were, of course gone.

"Here's how this is going to work, lady…" Jack sat heavily in front of Sapphire, his back against the door. "You're no longer in charge, here. Whatever authority you think you had over me, it's gone now. Which means you do what I say, when I say it. If you don't, somebody's going to die, and that leaves Holly to play Queen until she gets bored enough to venture onto the surface."

Sapphire had just spent the last ten minutes asking questions about the twins, like who they were, how they got they, why they were there, what they wanted… To no avail, obviously. Jack wasn't entirely an expert on the red-headed twins, himself, so he opted to stating they were there to help Jack. Now Sapphire was indignant, throwing her blood-covered nose up in the air haughtily. "I don't take too kindly to that tone of yours."

"Well, learn to." Jack shouldn't have been surprised that she had the gall to pull this attitude on him while she was bloodied and attached to a wall by a heater. But he was. Not that it showed through his tone, which was all edge. "The only reason you're still drawing air into those pretty little lungs of yours is because I decided that you can."

"Perhaps you should have just let me die, then." The bloodied brunette scoffed, completely unappreciative. "You came here to do a job, and look at how well you're doing."

"Well, you've caused me an extra problem to deal with."

"I did not cause it!"

"You say that, and yet your daughter is out in some secret hovel, doing who-knows-what with those buttons and dials, planning to kill us because you…" Jack pointed at Sapphire harshly, almost baring his teeth in anger. "… couldn't tell the difference between your daughter and a guinea pig."

Every time Jack used the word 'daughter', Sapphire flinched back, looking like she'd been slapped. She said nothing in return, only staring at Jack sideways.

"If you care about Holly at all, you'll be practically volunteering to help me." Jack continued after a satisfied silence. "Because the quicker you get me to her, the less likely it is that she'll have to die."

"Die!" Sapphire exclaimed, her green eyes as big as doorknobs. "In what world would it be acceptable to kill her?"

"The one where she wants to do the same to us, lady."

"Surely we can solve this without killing her?"

"If we do this the smart way. But if you take your time, and you drag your feet, we're not going to have that luxury." Jack paused, slitting his eyes in a near-threatening manner. "Which means I'm going to tell you to do things. I'm not going to ask you. I'm not going to wait around and see if you're OK with this or that… and I'm not doing all of the work."

"And if I refuse…?" Sapphire didn't exactly sound very confident in her rebellious question, but seemed to feel it necessary to ask anyways.

"You're a lady, Sapphire, but you're in a man's world. You tell me what men usually do to men when they want something done."

"Violence isn't as coercive as you think it is."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "It's worked well enough for me, so far."

Sapphire remained silent, visibly thinking out her options. Jack observed without any further prompting, knowing he'd already won her over. She was just putting up her little show… There was no way that she didn't realize she was out of options, not with all the odds stacked against her.

After the faux deliberation, she nodded reluctantly, moving her eyes from the floor up to Jack's face. "Fine," She growled in a flat tone. "So then what happens next… boss?"

Jack felt another sprig of satisfaction at this, even though he knew how forced her words were. "You have a lot of explaining to do."