At first she thought she was imagining it; a ghostly childish voice, singing to itself, and the patter of small feet on the boards.
Not many people came down to the grotto, not when there was a tea garden or a tree farm to visit. Julie brushed the dirt off her gloves and listened.
"Mister Bubbles, Mister Bubbles, are you there, are you there?" It sounded like a little girl, the high-pitched voice singsong with a strange tone to it. Like it was a recording.
Julie shook her head and patted the dirt around the roots of the rosebush she'd planted at the base of the water wheel. Last week she'd planted the others, but the arrangement hadn't looked right with the left side of the wheel bare.
Roses weren't the most practical plants in Arcadia, but with the tree farm exceeding expectations of oxygen production, she figured it was safe to plant something merely for its looks.
She took her gloves off and fingered the delicate, thorned stems; ran a fingernail over the small blossoms. Breeds from topside sometimes wouldn't grow in Rapture. These roses were a special cross of her own; a hardy heirloom breed crossed to a lovely English tea rose. In the lab they'd grown fine. Out in Arcadia, basking in reflected sunlight instead of glaring fluorescent lights, she hoped they'd flourish.
The little girl's voice drew closer, and Julie heard the thump of heavy footsteps close by, the floorboards creaking.
Using the waterwheel's superstructure as a support, she got to her feet, and had her first glimpse of a Little Sister.
Julie had heard about the program, vaguely. Little girls collecting ADAM from the bodies of the dead, protected by men in diving suits. She kept Arcadia under the best security she could, but eventually the war had come to her, and with it, the Sisters.
The little girl skipped down the stairs into the grotto, humming in that odd voice. She wrapped her hands around the metal gate that led into one of the sequestered little rooms and peered down it.
The Big Daddy moaned, and Julie flinched; the sound was unexpectedly loud and reverberated off the stone walls.
"Don't be silly, Daddy!" the Sister said, turning from the gate and moving along the walk towards a vending machine. "I know there's no angels here. You said we could see the flowers." She stamped her foot in mock anger and giggled.
The girl ran ahead of the Daddy as he lumbered behind her; she peered at the door to the storage room, then spied the steps leading down to the water. She clapped her hands. "Look, Mr. B! Rosies and sunshine!"
Julie frowned. The girl's eyes were yellow, her dress and pinafore filthy, her feet bare, but for some reason she looked familiar.
The Lamb woman - yes, her daughter had had the same braid of long black hair, the same pale skin. Julie had only seen the child once, when Lamb called her in to consult on the plant life in Dionysus Park. She disliked children for the most part, but Eleanor seemed polite enough.
Could this Sister be that little girl? Perhaps. Lamb had disappeared, and with her gone the child would have had no family.
Such terrible things happened in Rapture, Julie mused.
The girl, whoever she might have been, skipped down the stairs to the water, then swished one foot in it.
"Daddy - it's wet!"
At closer range, Julie could make out the Daddy more easily - tall, looming over the Sister, with a drill mounted to the right hand and a glowing yellow porthole where the face should be.
Seeing Julie standing perplexed with her boots in the water, within ten feet of the Sister, the Daddy increased its lumbering speed and uttered a groan.
The Sister jumped into the water and turned to beam up at the monster behind her. "See, Daddy? I'm okay!"
The girl splashed forward through the water, humming to herself again as the Daddy tried to catch up with her. She darted about like a bee, investigating everything she saw, touching nothing.
Julie shrugged and returned her attention to the roses. The ones she'd planted last week were growing well, though it would be some time before she could tell if they would be able to really thrive in this environment. She picked up her pruning shears, spying a sickly branch.
Sloshing footsteps approached her, and she glanced up.
The Sister had come to the last object in the grotto which she hadn't thoroughly investigated: the waterwheel and its roses.
The girl stretched out a hand to touch the blossoms, and Julie winced.
She paused, then sing-songed, "Daddy, can I have a rosie?"
It made a mournful sound in reply.
The Sister giggled. "I'll be careful. Promise."
Julie looked at her shears and sighed. Well, it wasn't as if Arcadia had drawn many people since Ryan had restricted it to paying customers only.
She snipped off a blossom - beautiful, deep red - and ran the blades along the stem, removing the tips of the thorns.
She dropped the shears and extended the rose to the Sister.
Thin fingers wrapped around the stem, and the girl chirped, "Thank you!" before rushing to the Daddy's side.
The girl cocked her head like a dog listening for a sound, and rushed off up the stairs. "I smell an angel, Daddy!"
The Daddy rumbled, and looked straight at Julie. Then it nodded, and turned to follow the girl.
Julie shuddered, suddenly remembering the stories about people dismembered by angry Daddies after getting too close to the Sister. But these two seemed... different. She'd never heard of a Sister interested by anything but ADAM before.
And though she couldn't see its eyes, the way it had looked at her... she could imagine a human mind somewhere inside that metal shell, and human eyes that had seen her as something that was neither foe nor ADAM-filled body.
Just another human being, lost in the Rapture nightmare.