JUNE 10, 1959 — 3:07 AM

The sun was still low on the horizon, but already it painted the sky above in brilliant strokes of red and yellow-gold. Waves lapped at the lighthouse steps, gently bobbing the bathysphere to and fro where it was moored below. Jack sat in front of the lighthouse's great metal doors, Tenenbaum at his side, keeping a watchful eye for their rescue to arrive.

As it had turned out, the submarine Tenenbaum had used to escape contained barely enough fuel to make it much further past the lighthouse. So it was at the lighthouse she docked, ushered the children inside to keep warm, and called for help to any vessels near enough to pick up her signal.

There wasn't anything Jack could have done, in the end. But this discovery was less heartbreaking than he might have anticipated.

If he had aimed for the chasm after all, he would never have seen the sky. He might never have known that there existed anything in this world more vast and breathtaking than the ocean itself.

Even if he didn't belong up here, maybe this sight alone was something worth living for.

After Tenenbaum had radioed their coordinates to a far-off fishing vessel, straining to find some point of commonality between their Icelandic and her German-colored English, she was silent for some time. She made no question of Jack's survival, or what had happened to him at all in the time since her escape. Jack was thankful for it.

But the questions she did end up asking him made him less sure.

"What will you do, Jack? Once we have reached land."

He didn't know. He knew even less what kind of answer he could give her that wasn't the truth: that he hadn't honestly planned on making it this far, much less to dry land.

He took a deep breath before he decided to answer with at least part of the truth.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I've still got some time to figure it out, I guess."

Tenenbaum made no immediate reply, except to look out towards the sea in silent reflection.

"The girls... They will need someone to look after them."

Jack felt a pang of confusion in his gut as he turned to look at Tenenbaum. "What about you?"

"I cannot stay here forever," she said with a shake of her head. "There are still so, so many little ones down there... There are still so many people in Rapture who have suffered for my sins. I expect, one day, I shall have to return...to put those sins to right."

The pang felt more like a twist this time. One day, his father had said, one day Jack might be able to return—but would he still want to? Would there be anything left for him to return to?

"What about—" Jack stopped himself, unexpectedly; his mouth was dry, and his voice was hoarse. "What about...until then?"

"Until then..." Tenenbaum shook her head. "Even with me to protect them, they will still need someone to provide what I cannot: someone who understands what it is like to have the ocean as the only home they have ever known...what it is like to have had their lives stolen for the greed of mankind."

When Tenenbaum looked to him again, it was with an expression full of guilt.

Once again, Jack felt that pit in his stomach beginning to open its maw. If he didn't ask her now, if he didn't ask her what had been plaguing him since Apollo Square, he felt he might never find the nerve to ask her again.

"Dr. Tenenbaum..." He curled his hand into a fist to keep it from shaking. "When you spoke to Fontaine, you said... You said that only my father bore the keys to—" His voice faltered. "To my 'operation.'"

When he paused, Tenenbaum only nodded.

"What did you mean?"

Again, Tenenbaum made no immediate reply. But again, her face grew twisted with guilt.

"When we built you... Fontaine wanted to be sure that you would do anything he ordered of you, regardless of whether you wished it or not...and so we built your mind with many locks and keys to make it so."

Those words she had spat at Fontaine—would you kindly—echoed from somewhere in the back of his mind. Jack remembered when Atlas had said them to him, when he had said them with such kindness and familiarity. The memory made him sick.

"And when Ryan discovered these locks—when he had us explain to him their purpose, their operation... First, he was angry. Very angry, infuriated. Then he made us ensure that only he would bear those keys—not Fontaine, not anyone else, only him."

He remembered—his father had told him he had never used him like Fontaine meant, hadn't he? But how could Jack know that he had never used him at all? How could he ever know, without knowing what "locks" Ryan had used to bind him rather than would you kindly?

How could he know that he was never anything more than a tool, after all?

Suddenly, he was startled from his thoughts by Tenenbaum placing a hand on his arm.

"But always, Jack—always, he wanted to be able to pass those keys onto you."

His head swam.

"He never told me..." It took him a moment to realize that he was voicing his thoughts aloud, but once he realized it, he found he couldn't stop. "He told me everything else, but he never told me that—how could he pass that on without telling me that?"

"Jack." Tenenbaum kept her hand at his arm, her grip mirroring her voice: firm, but gentle nevertheless. "Whatever truths he kept from you, he kept only to protect you."

Ryan had said that much himself, hadn't he? But how could he believe...

Take this with you.

This time, it was his father's voice that echoed from the corners of his memory—his father's voice, and the memory of what he had given him before ordering him to leave.

I had hoped that one day I would give this to you under...happier circumstances. But these are desperate times.

It couldn't be—could it?

With a burst of desperation, Jack suddenly patted down his coat, searched through his pockets, prayed with all his might that it hadn't gotten lost in the chaos between Central Control and his flight from Arcadia—but no, the plasmid flask was still tucked safely away in the lining of his coat.

Jack gingerly drew it out, carefully holding it in his trembling hand. Its bright green glow seemed oddly muted in the soft sunlight.

"You see, yes?"

There was something new in Tenenbaum's voice as she spoke, something akin to a note of hope, something he had never heard in her voice before.

"That plasmid was something he had us create, as well... Andrew Ryan had intended for it to be his final gift to you."

That single word, final, came to a heavy rest in Jack's gut. But there was nothing he could do about that now.

"With it, no man will ever be able to control your actions again—no man but yourself, Jack."

He wondered, albeit dimly, if that time would have ever come as Ryan intended—if it hadn't been for Fontaine, if his plans had failed, if he had been stopped before Rapture could begin to crumble. But then again, if any of that had been true, what reason would he have had to exist in the first place?

"Do you understand, Jack?"

Jack's only answer was to nod as he lifted his gaze again, looking out to the sea once more. There was a moving speck on the horizon now, a speck moving straight towards them.

He didn't know if this was something he truly deserved just yet—if he was truly worthy of what his father had given him, or of what he had gained on his own by making it to the surface. But for Tenenbaum's sake, and the girls' sake—if not his own sake—he would have to do everything in his power to make it so.

JUNE 10, 1959 — 2:59 AM

Deep below the waves, just as Jack came to rest at the lighthouse above, Frank Fontaine steadily made his way back through Rolling Hills.

Those shotgun blasts had done a number on him—who knew?—but that wasn't nearly enough to put him down for good, oh, no. Maybe it had put him down long enough for the kid to escape, but that would change before too long.

He'd told Frank where he was going, after all. None of those bathyspheres could make it too far out in the open sea; he'd have to end up at the lighthouse one way or another. And then he'd be a sitting duck...

But his first order of business was to recover. He needed more ADAM, enough to put some strength back in his step so he could do more than this half-assed stagger he was using to get the hell out of here. He needed enough to beef up his plasmid powers, so that the kid couldn't even blink before he burnt to a crisp. Hell, he needed more than that—he needed to be faster, stronger, powerful enough to put Ryan out of the way and then some...

". . . And so we gather in this time of hardship to lift our voices to the ancients once more, that they might heed our chant and give us their strength . . ."

Goddamn Saturnine—what the hell were they still doing here? There was a whole group of the crazy bastards up ahead, gathered in a circle with their twig masks and stupid robes, swaying and chanting around a crude figure of straw while one of them shook his arms and blathered on about gods and offerings and whatnot.

What a load of bull. If Fontaine had ever regretted one thing about Ryan's law against organized religion, it was that saps of faith were often the easiest to con, but if it meant keeping this kind of riffraff under wraps? He was glad for it.

But now, the Saturnine were more than just irritating; they were in his way. He'd have to do something about that.

With a snap of his fingers, the straw figure burst into flame. That should send them scattering.

While they reacted with surprise, however, they didn't scatter at all. They looked around instead, until their attention focused squarely on Fontaine.

"A blessing, my brothers—spill the blood of the revolution, and drink deeply of him, that we may gain his strength!"

What?

The Saturnine began to advance on him with hissing voices: harness the mist, harness the power, blood for the blood gods. Fontaine realized rather suddenly that several of them carried sharpened hooks.

"Hey, fuck off—"

He had forgotten to readopt his Atlas voice as he backed away from them. But the Saturnine didn't seem to notice or care.

"Do you even know who I am— What do you think you're— Get the fuck away from me!"

The Saturnine lunged for him, and the halls of Arcadia were soon filled with his futile screams.