NOTES: Like I mentioned in the summary, this story is intended to be a brief dry run (and eventual tie-in) for the proper sequel to Batya, which is still in the planning stages. As such, some things may be very subject to change in the finished product. (So basically, this is like the E3 trailer to the actual release of BioShock Infinite.)

AUGUST 14, 1969

"Yes, the strong gets more, while the weak ones fade . . ."

The crooning voice of Billie Holiday came drifting down from somewhere overheard, crackling through hidden loudspeakers and filling the surrounding corridors with echoing strains. An unattended light flickered down the hall, off and on and off again, casting its entire length into intermittent darkness. It was something of a setback, more of an annoyance, but of both it was merely one of many, and there was work yet to be done.

Even with their power deactivated, the roving security bots did not take kindly to being opened up and having their inner workings scrambled; scores of blisters and electrical burns adorned the tips of his fingers, testaments all to his tinkering and the robots' intolerance for mistakes. But he had never not been a man of persistence, and in this case, he was determined to see his persistence triumph.

Oil drained from a nozzle and into the reservoir, sluicing down pipes and into hidden channels where it would be carried through the rest of the robot's machinations. With a deft, learned touch, he reconnected each wire to its proper pin, fitted its metal casing back into place, and held it snug with one hand while he used the other and his teeth to tear off enough duct tape to repair the thing where he'd pried it loose.

He'd done this much before, with little success. But that was hardly reason enough to keep him from trying again.

"But God bless the child that's got his own . . ."

He flipped the switch to reactivate the power, and immediately drew back as the bot stuttered to life. Its gears ground noisily as its rotor blades beat against the cracked tile floor, but with a loud whistle and chirp, it kicked itself off the ground long enough to right itself and hover some feet off the ground. Its headlamps glowed bright green in the flickering darkness, and its blades beat quietly, almost silently through the air.

Its flight was a marked improvement from before, which was enough to satisfy him for now. It was time to move on.

He hefted himself to his feet, limbs braced and bound in layers of makeshift padding and more swathes of duct tape, and reached for the rifle he'd carefully propped against the wall. It hadn't left his peripheral view since he'd begun meddling with the robot, but habit dictated that he check it thoroughly for interference or theft of ammunition, and so he did. One could never be too careful in this city, now that its once-gilded halls were crawling with splicers and minions of Lamb.

"He just don't worry 'bout nothin' . . ."

As he tugged down his mask, readjusting it to cover his face once again, and as the music wound down into static silence, a new voice came on to replace it.

"This is Sofia Lamb. Andrew Ryan is dead, but the tyrant lives on. Remember . . ."

A hoarse laugh sounded from his throat while she spoke, as if by its own will. The tyrant lived on indeed, and it was with tyranny that she had taken her throne.

Rapture had always been cold, as a simple consequence of being so deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. But in the years since Lamb first wrested control over the city, an entirely different kind of chill had entered the air, a chill which curled deep in his lungs and settled with heavy weight into his very bones. It was a kind of chill he knew all too well—it was the chill of decay, of a slow yet inevitable descent into death.

But he had weathered harsher winters than this. So too would Rapture weather this, and that belief—no, that determination was the one thing that kept him moving on, that fed his unending fight for survival.

During some long months, that fight was more of a struggle. On some days, that struggle was more difficult to maintain than anything else. But he hadn't come this far by being a man of weak resolve, and above all, he would not let himself be overcome.

He secured his mask into place, tugged down the brim of his hat, and gripped his rifle with both hands as he made his way down the hall. The security bot followed close behind, sputtering out occasional coughs of smoke and fumes as it hovered along.

Pneumo HS039—that was his destination. The call letters burned in his mind like a gleaming map marker, like a beacon shining across a distance of broken tiles and waterlogged streets. The city was crumbling in places where it should have never fallen, and by the day it grew more and more difficult to traverse. But he'd been walking these streets for well over twenty years now; none could navigate them better than he.

He came to a walkway overlooking a grand foyer, where shimmering chandeliers had once brightened the open space with golden glitz, where Rapture's elite had once stopped at the fountain to take in views of the city, and where banners had once hung in celebration of all Rapture had achieved and more. By now, those banners were long torn and faded with mold, draping the seawater-slick floor where they didn't still cling with futility to the rafters; the only light came from crude electric lanterns strung through the stairway rails, and from the lights of Rapture that still shone beyond the foyer's great glass windows. The walls had been painted, as in much of the city, with the Rapture Family's tired mantras:

WE WILL BE REBORN
ASCENSION IS NEAR
THE MARINER WILL GUARD US
SHE IS OUR SALVATION

As always, they garnered a weary snort. Over the years, he'd gained some ideas here and there of exactly what Lamb's definition of salvation entailed, and the exact methods of her plan mattered little to him in the end. But the nature of it, the sheer gall of her attempts to take Rapture's destiny into her own hands... No, that would not stand.

If what he'd heard from his contacts and the mutterings of splicers in the streets had any veracity whatsoever, he was running out of time to do something about it. It was possible, he supposed, to simply let her follow her scheme through to the end, let her and her precious family extinguish themselves in the name of rebirth. Even if her plans succeeded, however, it was not the way men like him dealt with such things, and it would certainly not be the way he dealt with this.

Even if he was left with no other choice in the end, for now, he could not allow himself to simply roll over and give up.

The pneumo tube he sought was tucked away into a niche at the far end of the walkway. Its lights were dimmed, which set him on his guard; some splicer had undoubtedly come scavenging here in search of supplies. But there was still a mail capsule tucked away in the tube, and while its cap had obviously been twisted off, a scrap of paper remained folded inside. Words had been scrawled upon it with an evidently hasty hand, but it was not a hand unfamiliar to him, and for the first time that day, he felt the slightest pang of relief as he read it over.

Mama bird's come to roost
Looking for sisters and adam cure?
Won't say what else but there's something
All keeping our hands close to the chest

The coded language was too thinly veiled for it to need much deciphering: Tenenbaum had returned. There had never been much doubt in his mind that she would—there had been far more Little Sisters in Rapture than those she had abducted, after all—but the timing of her return seemed oddly fortuitous.

Of course, he had never been a man to believe in fortune. There had to be some deeper reason behind all this.

He turned the paper over to find another hastily penned message, still in the same hand as before.

Says she needs to get to the cathedral
Going to kill the mariner and get out of dodge
Lamb's locked it up tight, need genes to get in
Says she can get them but I say this is more convenient
HP214 MS021
OH116 WC002

There was no part of it that didn't make him scoff. Yes, the so-called Mariner posed a significant challenge to any who attempted to cross the city bounds, but the idea of only one or two people attempting to do anything about it was simply preposterous.

Then again, if one could get to the controls in Lamb's illustriously named "cathedral"—the Altar of Lamb as it was now called, the cloistered hall in Hephaestus she had stormed and plundered by force—perhaps then... But no, gaining access to the place under Lamb's watch was even more of an impossibility. Even aside from that...

As if on cue, another recorded message came to life over the public address speakers:

"Remember: Do not fear the Mariner, for his duty is to devour the tyranny within us. His presence here is not without purpose, and his task only furthers our cause."

It was meant in earnest, but in his ears it was little more than a joke, one that only grew more and more pathetic every time he heard it. Ever since the thing had first reared its ugly head, Sofia Lamb had never once demonstrated any true control over the Mariner or its actions. She could put no sincere claim to the destruction it wreaked, and there was little doubt that it posed just as much a threat to her and her Family as it did the rest of Rapture and its supposed tyranny. But it served her cause to call it all part of the plan, and so she did, and so long as it served her in this capacity, she would surely not allow it to be destroyed.

None of these, however, were thoughts for him to consider now. He turned his attention instead to memorizing the call letters scratched at the bottom of the paper.

It was shortly afterward, as he crumpled the paper and tucked it into the pocket of his coat, that he realized there was some commotion occurring in the halls below.

He took his rifle in both hands again, caution renewed, and carefully, quietly stalked back along the walkway to see what was going on.

A crowd had gathered in the foyer below, between the disused fountain and the railing that sat before the area's wide windows. From their masks, the tatters of their clothes, and the fact that they were congregating at all, he could only guess that the whole lot of them were splicers; he didn't have to spy the blue butterflies pinned to their lapels to know that they were members of Lamb's flock.

At first, he thought it best to distance himself from the situation as quickly as possible. Then he noticed the crowd pushing one of their number to a clearing in the front—a man with knobby, beaten features, with his hands bound behind his back. When he peered closer, he found he recognized the man as one Stanley Poole.

This required further observation.

"What about this one?" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Feed him to the Mariner!"

"No—" It seemed it was all Poole could do to shout in his own defense, as another splicer came forth from the crowd to roughly hold him in place. "No, no! You can't do that, Lamb—Doctor Lamb, she said she forgave me for all of that— I'm one of you, too—"

"Liar!"

"Tyrant!"

"No, no!" Poole's face twisted with desperation. "Listen to me, there's a lot worse than me out there, okay?! Just listen—"

This would not do.

"Sinclair, you know— That scumbag Sinclair's still out there somewhere, and he's still a Ryanist— He's been helping someone, he's helping Ryanists, I swear—"

He crouched behind the railing, threaded the barrel of his rifle through its clouded chrome slats, and leveled the sight with Poole's bloodied face.

"I can help you find him— I can help you find all of 'em, if you'd just—"

Just as he prepared to squeeze the trigger, a low rumble shook throughout the building, followed by an echoing, cacophonous roar. A great, long shadow swam past the glass windows, its shape indistinct beyond the brightly glowing tendrils that writhed from its belly.

A hush had fallen over the crowd at the sight of it, but when it passed, they resumed their jeering and shouting with greater vigor than before. All trace of expression quickly drained from Poole's face, save that of fear.

"Oh, God— Oh, Jesus, no, you can't— No, please, you can't do this, please, don't do this to me—"

Poole was silenced by a sack pulled over his head, and the crowd broke into loud cheers.

"Take him to the airlock!"

"Hurry!"

The splicers pushed Poole along, and in a matter of moments, they were gone.

He had drawn away his rifle when the Mariner passed by, but only after he was certain the splicers were well out of earshot did he allow himself a breath of relief. For once, a problem had managed to solve itself.

But surely there would be more to come, particularly if any of them chose to return this way. He had to stay on the move.

"Dasvidaniya," he muttered as he pulled himself upright once more, as though Stanley could have ever heard him. If the wretch had any luck left at all, he would drown before ending up in the Mariner's maw.

He made his way toward the stairs, keeping a watchful eye out for any straggling splicers, and the security bot kept whirring and puttering along behind him as he headed for the elevators below.

Before he could safely reach the ground level, however, the sound of more voices in the distance forced him to draw back and duck into the shadows all over again.

". . . Up here, Mr. Anders—they must be gone by now . . ."

Anders—the name struck him as familiar and yet foreign all at once. But it was the speaker that drew more, much more of his immediate attention.

The voice was young, undoubtedly female, and possessed a distinctive, immediately recognizable accent.

It wasn't a voice he recognized, but he could make enough of a guess as to its origin that he deemed a closer look to be necessary.

He came upon a pair of figures from behind, far below his vantage from the walkway, and as soon as he laid sight upon them he felt an instinctive urge to back away, for one of them had the spindly, gangling silhouette of an armed and armored Big Sister. But no—the helmet was missing, and in its place was the head of a normal human girl.

Could it possibly be...?

The figure that accompanied her was a man, swarthy and tall, armed with a shotgun and keeping a steady pace behind the Sister-suited girl. His carriage was guarded, too guarded to be that of a common splicer, and there was something in the sure strides he took that rang once again with familiarity. Still, it wasn't familiar enough to place him with any higher interest than the girl herself.

He followed the pair as best he could without descending from the walkway, without fully emerging from the shadows. From his distance, he could hardly make out the specifics of their conversation, but the girl's voice when she spoke again, her face when she turned to look the other man in the eye—

". . . rest here—I'll scout ahead . . ."

There was no mistaking her identity now: Eleanor Lamb.

When this realization came to him, a cold, quiet fury began to make itself known in the space of his heart.

But how would fury serve him here? He attempted to push it aside by considering the situation with logic: what was the younger Lamb doing here in the first place? Even after her control over the city was well assured, Sofia had chosen not to take her throne in Hephaestus, but rather to retreat into the guarded walls of Persephone. That was where she had kept Eleanor as well, if the word of her splicers was to be believed; if that was true, then surely Sofia had little reason to let her wander the streets of Rapture unattended.

He couldn't recall hearing any announcement that the girl had gone missing. Of course, that was hardly illogical once he considered it. Why would Sofia Lamb risk whipping up her followers into a panicked frenzy, after all, by informing them that their supposed savior was no longer in her custody?

She must have come here by her own determination, perhaps in defiance of her mother's will.

The thought of it sparked tinges of nostalgia at the edges of his mind, the sort of nostalgia that walked a thin, too-thin line between anger and despair.

In what world was it just that the child of Lamb could walk these streets as her own, while the child of Ryan—the child of the man who had built this city with his own hands, without whom such wonders could never dare to exist—had been forced into exile?

In what world was it just that the daughter of Sofia Lamb played the role of exalted saint while his son, his progeny, his own flesh and blood had been stripped of any chance at true greatness?

Despite his attempts to put it aside, that cold fury churned over and over in his mind, stoking itself into full-bodied rage. He could not let this pass.

The two of them had separated; Eleanor went on ahead, in the direction where the splicers had gone, while the armed man had lingered behind, drifting to a neglected lounge filled with moldy seats and overturned tables. The man settled into a round bench, tipping his head back against the ripped cushions and breathing deep the salty air.

Slowly, quietly, he lifted the barrel of his rifle once more. As he leveled the sight with the man's head, all he could make of his features was the blood on his face and an unpleasant crook in his nose, but he could risk coming no closer. Surely, though, he didn't need to come any closer than this. He would only need one shot...

Yet something stayed his hand—a small pinprick of doubt, too small for him to clearly decipher its origin, but too large for him to safely ignore.

He dwelt upon it long enough to draw his gun away, and in that time, came to a simple conclusion: the sound of the shot would easily carry to wherever Eleanor had just gone. Even if, as he had presumed, this man was acting in any capacity as her escort, then there was little guarantee she would return here instead of fleeing deeper into Rapture.

In any case, Eleanor was the greater priority. This man, whatever he might be to her, could be disposed of later.

Some doubt still lingered in his mind as he moved on from the spot, stalking past the man's line of sight and after Eleanor's path in practiced silence. But he could not let doubt still his hand or bar his path now.

One could not build cities if one was guided by doubt—nor could he save them, much less avenge them.