I'm putting this at the start of the story because I'm too lazy to put it in every chapter. I own nothing except Louis Carlson, the plot, the phone I write this crazy story on before I type it out on a laptop, and the USB stick the story is subsequently saved on. Updates will probably be infrequent and widely spaced as I battle my regular attacks of writer's block and find time to type this madness up. I welcome and appreciate praise, constructive criticism, and people pointing out any spelling and grammar mistakes. Flames will be ignored/used to make s'mores, because I'm assuming you're not tied to a chair and forced to read this, so if you decide you don't like this, don't keep reading it. Thank you.
Rapture. A city under the sea. Once a glowing capitalist utopia, now a crumbling monument to a dream gone wrong. Its citizens, monsters, twisted by a drug that changed their DNA, disfigured their faces and bodies, and ruined their minds.
Some people have escaped. Eleanor, the daughter of the mad cultist Sofia Lamb, was able to leave Rapture. She took up vigilantism and is currently working under the alias of the Red-Eyed Ghost and looking after the Little Sisters who came with her. Another escapee is Jack Ryan, son of the founder of Rapture. He started up a child welfare charity and had a family before he was killed by cancer from the ADAM he'd taken during his undersea adventures. His son John stayed in his house. And one of John's cousins...well, let's just say that Louis Carlson had some things in common with one of Rapture's more famous figures. Someone whose actions helped to bring about the fall of Rapture. A man named Yi Suchong.
Louis had always been a scientist at heart, preferring biology and chemistry to history and religious education. He wanted to do something big, something that would make the whole world sit up and take notice. He had heard his Uncle Jack speak of a strange underwater city once, when he was babbling from the effects of drugs given to him to help combat the pain from regular operations to remove the worse tumours. The story had stuck in his mind, and that was why he was sat in the attic of his uncle's old house, rummaging through boxes as he looked for evidence of the city.
He was about to give up when he spotted a box practically mummified in tape. Through the yellow-tinted coverings, Louis could make out the word "Tenembaum."
Tenembaum? Wasn't she Uncle Jack's mom? Dead two years now. Why would her possessions be so tightly sealed up? As though they contained something that should never get out.
Louis grabbed the box cutter knife and started to cut through the layers of tape. It took a while to peel away the thick shell that coated the box, but eventually, he reached the cardboard, sliced through the thick brown strip of tape that held the box closed, and pulled open the flaps.
Inside was something that simultaneously baffled and delighted him. Scientific journals. So Mama Tenembaum had been a scientist? He'd never known that. He'd known that she would always listen when he talked about his latest project, but he'd never known that she'd actually understood him. He eagerly reached for the first journal, noticing happily that they were all dated, and began to read.
Three journals in, Louis had nearly forgotten about the underwater city that had originally drawn him to search the attic, and he'd learned a lot more about his family. Mama Tenembaum was a brilliant woman. Her ideas about changing people on a genetic level were amazing, sparking ideas in his own head about how he could expand on her research. Glancing at his watch, Louis was shocked to realize that three and a half hours had passed. He quickly slipped as many journals as he could fit into his bag and left.
Over the next few weeks, Louis smuggled Mama Tenembaum's journals out of the attic, along with the journals of someone named Suchong that had been boxed up with hers. Maybe Suchong had been a co-worker. He'd read up to journal 10 when he was abruptly reminded of why he'd first come to the attic. Mama Tenembaum received an invitation to a place called Rapture. The journals were a mixture of scientific research, diary entries and scrapbooks, and Mama Tenembaum had pasted the invitation into the journal. Louis admired the Art Deco styling and personalised wording of the invite. The invitation directed the recipient to Greenland. Louis eagerly flipped through the pages. The next few passages described Mama Tenembaum's journey to Greenland, where she'd spent the entire voyage either terrified of sinking or horribly seasick. Upon her arrival, she had not been pleased to learn that there was another boat ride in store. She, like the other passengers, had been most confused upon arrival at a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. They had all filed into the lighthouse, where they'd been guided to a bathysphere. Louis paused here to look the word up. A primitive submarine? Instantly, Uncle Jack's stories hit him again. An underwater city…Louis grabbed the journal and turned the page.
Louis didn't sleep much over the next month. He co-workers remarked on how exhausted he seemed, but Louis didn't listen. Mama Tenembaum's journals just got more and more interesting. Rapture was bloody sophisticated for being built in the 1940s. It was in journal 18 when Louis learnt that Mama Tenembaum had made possibly the greatest discovery of all time.
ADAM.
Louis couldn't fathom why Mama Tenembaum hadn't told anyone about her discovery. ADAM was a miracle! A chemical that could heal injuries and eradicate disease, rewrite the genetic code, even bestow superpowers. Louis recalled a distant childhood fantasy of being a superhero and wondered why the discovery of ADAM had been kept secret. Maybe the answers were further along in the journals.
Louis read about Mama Tenembaum's experiments with ADAM. He was already plotting his own experiments using more modern, sophisticated equipment. He read as Mama Tenembaum manipulated ADAM alongside Suchong-her partner in the field. However, a problem, arising from his Business Studies course, had emerged-the problem of supply and demand. If ADAM was announced to the people of Rapture, Louis had no doubts that they would leap on it. Louis' mind was whirling with possibilities. An immunisation programme that would be a hell of a lot more effective and efficient. A series of injections that could give a specific set of metahuman abilities. Plastic surgery would go out the window when ADAM could change your genes to give you the chiselled chin or perfect nose you'd always wanted. But all of that would take ADAM. And Mama Tenembaum was worried. Her experiments were taking up most of the ADAM gathered from the sea slugs that produced the stuff. So how could they possibly enhance the slugs' production speed?
The answer had been discovered by accident. Hosts. Louis was both intrigued and disgusted at the prospect of implanting a slug in a person's stomach and collecting the glowing green goo said person would then periodically throw up. Mama Tenembaum expressed doubts about the viability of the procedure. After all, who'd volunteer themselves as a walking super-chemical factory?
Answer: no-one. They hadn't had volunteers, because the only viable hosts were young girls. The 'Little Sisters,' as they were called, were taken from an orphanage built specifically for the purpose of housing unwanted little girls until they were needed. Apparently the process resulted in sickly pale skin, glowing yellow eyes, and darkened hair colour, but they still acted like normal children.
Now, you have to understand. Louis wasn't truly awful. It's just that when he got excited about his projects, he tended to forget little things like ethics and morals. Louis knew that it was horrible to treat little girls like objects, but he also thought that because the only difference was a change in hair, eye, and skin pigment and producing ADAM, it wasn't that bad. And the kids hadn't had a family anyway. No one was going to kick up a fuss about their daughter being a part of ADAM production if they didn't want said daughter in the first place.
Louis read on. As he'd thought, the people of Rapture immediately embraced ADAM. The different kinds available were split into two types-Gene Tonics, which affected the body just by being injected, and Plasmids, which required a type of fuel called EVE. Gene Tonics were generally passive-improving resistance to hot or cold temperatures, lessening the amount of EVE needed to power a plasmid, stuff like that. Plasmids were the powerful stuff. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, electrokinesis. More stuff that didn't end in '-kinesis.' Louis wondered once more why Mama Tenembaum hadn't told anyone about her discovery.
The next few passages were relatively mundane. Mama Tenembaum wrote about how she and Suchong were creating more and more Plasmids and Tonics. Apparently their employer changed, but not their jobs. And Mama Tenembaum started to worry.
It looked like ADAM did have side effects. Bad ones. People were developing various disfigurements the more they used ADAM. Tumours, loose skin, hair and teeth falling out. Their mental states started to deteriorate as well. Hallucinations, paranoia, and violent fits of rage were the most common problems. But once they started using ADAM, they got addicted. Seriously addicted. They couldn't stop 'splicing,' as using ADAM was known. Louis put the journal down and thought for a bit. So ADAM was addicting and led to insanity and disfigurements. Perhaps it had something to do with the unstable nature of the substance...maybe the negative effects of ADAM could be nullified by using some kind of stabiliser after splicing...Louis shook his head. If he was going to prove any of his theories, he'd need ADAM to experiment with. If he was going to obtain ADAM, he needed to get to Rapture. And if he was planning to survive in Rapture (and he was,) he had to finish these journals. Louis kept reading.
Mama Tenembaum was worried about the effects of splicing. And soon the situation became even direr.
Civil war broke out. There had been unrest in Rapture. Rapture's capitalist policies meant that while the rich got richer, the poor got poorer. Socialists were decried as 'parasites.' Social welfare programmes and benefit systems didn't exist. And eventually, on New Year's Eve 1959, a popular restaurant, the Kashmir, where Rapture's founder, Mr. Ryan, was dining that night, was attacked. Rapture quickly turned into an anarchist war-zone. Tonics like FreshHair and Rejuvena were dropped, in favour of plasmids like Insect Swarm and Incinerate. Demand for ADAM grew to the point where Little Sisters were mentally conditioned to see Rapture as beautiful and peaceful, so they weren't scared, and to see ADAM-rich corpses as 'angels' and their blood as chocolate. They were sent out to collect and 'recycle' ADAM by drinking it in order to increase the supply. To keep them safe, people (AKA criminals or folks no-one would miss) were turned into 'Big Daddies'-brainwashed, armour-clad behemoths wielding deadly weaponry to protect their young charges from the insane, ADAM-addicted populace. The idea had been kicking around for years, with similar suits used to go outside and perform repairs and maintenance work, but their new task was to use their drills and rivet guns to bring down anyone who threatened a Little Sister.
Eventually, Uncle Jack made an appearance. Apparently he was the son of Rapture's founder, Andrew Ryan. He'd been programmed with a trigger phrase that forced him to obey orders, and Ryan's enemies had seized him and sent him up with a head full of fake memories. He'd come into Rapture after causing a plane crash next to the lighthouse that was the entrance to Rapture. After battling his way through the mad city, he rescued many of the Little Sisters and Mama Tenembaum.
Mama Tenembaum's last journal detailed a final visit to Rapture. Little girls along the coast were being kidnapped, and Mama Tenembaum felt that it had something to do with Rapture. She'd arrived to a bizarre religious cult, grown up Little Sisters who had gone feral and now protected their young replacements under the name 'Big Sisters,' and two unexpected allies in the form of the cult leader's daughter, ex-Little Sister Eleanor, and Eleanor's old Big Daddy, Alpha Series Delta, usually just called Delta. Mama Tenembaum returned to the surface long enough to see the sun and say a final goodbye to Eleanor.
Louis put down the final, finished journal and thought for a long while. Then he reached for his laptop and started looking at travel prices to Greenland and gun handling lessons.