Nighttime

The house was settling but every noise that it made unsettled Jack to know end. He lay awake in his room, down the hall from the girls and the bathroom. He tossed and turned and every creak of the house, every moan of the old wood would make him sit up or start sweating that cold sweat. Jack was not used to this, this feeling of unease in the world. Of course, his world had changed significantly since he had taken that trip to the bottom of the sea.

He had gone down a farmer and come back up a father. He had saved twenty little girls from a delirious thirst for vital fluids and from a life of danger that came from collapsed tunnels, gun wielding madmen and any other host of hostilities and pratfalls. He had split them up evenly with Tenebaum for no one could be expected to take care of twenty little girls. He had returned to the town that he had come from, finding the farm now in his name and his father and mother gone. Were they ever really there in the first place? He had no idea, he just knew that it was time for him to make his own life. Things were a might easier now, the plasmids could make acres worth of work fall away like sighing. He had found that drinking various fruit juices did as much to replenish his EVE as much as alcohol. This was good because he had no want to become a drunk just to get his work done.

Things had been made much easier for those first months by Jack's findings. He had left the girls at the bathysphere station to the surface in the care of five Big Daddies and three turrets. He had come back to find several dozen splicers laid out in front of them. The girls had welcomed him back and then helped him with his luggage. It took two of them to lift each suitcase he had packed them so full of jewelry and gold, whatever he could find. Two bathyspheres met him at the surface, he unloaded them and then bought his way back across the country to the Midwest. They could have lived comfortably off it for years, but Jack knew that the thing to do would be to plan for their futures, college, life, so it went into the bank. An account in each of their names, he had named them after flowers Rose, Lily, Marigold(Mary for short), Petunia and Daisy after that he had run out of proper names and started with the names of popular actresses at the time, Rita, Audrey, Vivian, Lana and Susan. The girls were all relatively happy, they loved the sunshine and the plants and animals, they seemed never to want to go the ocean again, something he was all whole hearted for. They went to school, the conditioning seemed to be wearing off and they were very smart. Jack shined like a warm little sun when the teachers told him that in their parent teacher conferences. They called him "Papa Jack", he didn't mind. They milked the cow and collected the eggs, something he thought they would like better than collecting ADAM. He had bought them a dog with a spot on its side, which against all logic was named "Little Puppy" until it became "Big Doggy".

Yet fear continued to creep into his heart at every turn. He could never be sure whether he was doing the right thing or not. He had vague recollections of what a father was supposed to be but how was he supposed to know? For God's sake, he had killed his father when he had met him for the first time. Where did that leave him, he had no model, he had no example there was nothing but instinct. Fortunately, his instincts seemed to be clear and he did well though he didn't know. He got up every morning and made their breakfast and lunches. Saw them all off to the school bus, was there when they got off, every day without fail. He settled disputes without the girls holding grudges against one another, he kissed bruises and boo boos, he checked under the bed for monsters and read from Alice in Wonderland for them.

But then came nights like this, when he would lay awake and be unable to sleep. Every sound was one of Fontaine's agents coming up to slit his throat and take the girls back. Every noise was some deranged splicer who had risen from the bottom of the ocean to seek vengeance against him.

And besides this, he had the normal nightmares of a parent. Nightmares of empty cots, of darkness, of finding blood on the floor or finding nothing, of open windows and missing children. He imagined that they never made it to the bus and he would have no way to find them. All the power at his control would be worthless, he had two tonics that made him nearly bullet proof but what good would that be against that tremendous loss? Not a fucking thing.

It would be nights like this that he would check in on the girls two or three times a night. Sometimes two or three times and hour. He would walk to the door, gun in his hand, because he had taken all his weapons with him unworried about the girls finding them for they had had enough of weapons. Then he would see them, he would count them, make sure that they were all there. He would see Big Puppy look up at him and his tail would hammer against the floor. Then he would lay down. The difference between Jack and most parents was that parents had terrifying imaginations. Jack had the same thing only he knew that there were real dangers out there.

Then he would flex his hands in the darkness. Flames would wrap his left, then frost would dot it, then a red ball of strange liquid and pheromones, then he would make something float far away from him and finally lightning crackling around his fingers. If anyone wanted these girls they would have to step over his and Big Puppy's dead bodies. He smiled before finally turning over. Soon he fell asleep and soon the next day would dawn and it would all start over. The worry, the joy, the fear, the threats of the unknown all of it.

And what a wonderful life it was.