Ice cold water trickled down from a crack in the thick glass ceiling above, pooling to create a half inch deep puddle that covered the length of the upper hallway in Fort Frolic. A neon sign advertising Eve's Garden was reflected on its surface. Water water everywhere, but none that's safe to drink, Henry Galt thought dryly . In the distance, he could hear the tell tale heavy footsteps, as well as the metallic groan, of a Big Daddy on patrol. He knew that this area was inhabited by several of the so called "Bouncer" variety; he had recently seen one in action up close and personal, and the memory of that encounter was enough to convince him it was in his best interest to keep his distance.
Several weeks ago, when in the Poseidon section of Fort Frolic, he heard the clatter of automatic fire, the screams of dying men, and the ground shaking howl of an enraged Big Daddy. Going to investigate, he beheld six men with Thompson submachine guns surrounding and firing on a Big Daddy. The Big Daddy, fully eight feet tall in thick steel armor, a gigantic spinning drill at then end of his arm in place of a right hand and a diving helmet with multiple portholes on his head, stood before his cowering Little Sister, shielding her from the battle. In a pale pink dress and pony tail, she sat crying, yelling for her metal father to "unzip them". With his thick armor, the bullets weren't an immediate threat to him, but even a Big Daddy can't endure continuous fire indefinitely. The men kept their distance, spread out so that he couldn't attack them without leaving the Little Sister unprotected. Henry noticed three men lay dead at the Big Daddy's feet, men who, judging by their grotesque injuries and twisted limbs, had ventured too close to the metallic monster and were ended by his massive drill or inhuman strength.
Even as Henry watched from his vantage point behind a stone pillar, one of the men tried to flank the Big Daddy, staying out of his line of sight. Unfortunately for the man, the Big Daddy sensed his presence, spinning around and dealing him a powerful blow across the jaw with the drill with a dull crack. The man was sent sliding across the smooth floor, stopping feet away from Henry. Glancing at the crowbar he had in his own hand, and then at the machine gun still clutched by the man who's face now smashed beyond all recognition, Henry darted forward and pried it out of his grip, also hurrying to check his coat for extra magazines: to his luck, the man had died with a spare clip in his front coat pocket. Another angry roar from the Big Daddy shook the very foundations of Rapture, making flakes of plaster rain down from the ceiling. By this point the attacking men had circled further to the left, moving so that they were directly across from Henry and the Big Daddy had his back to him. With the Little Sister scarcely twenty feet away, a crazy idea began to steep into Henry's head.
Henry had never seriously spliced, but ADAM was ever present in Rapture, with trace amounts detectable in everything from food to first aid kits. Combined with the Gene Tonics he sampled when he was younger, he was, like all citizens of Rapture, addicted to a degree to ADAM. Not an addiction, in the sense he was chasing a high, although ADAM highs were like none other. No, it was a physiological addiction. ADAM was similar to a cancer, its instability meaning his body would literally break down if it went without it for too long. He had seen it happen to many others, first their bodies, then their minds. It had been nearly a week since had tasted ADAM, as his own stockpile of the stuff, which he began to hoard during the first days of the civil war, were long gone and the vials other people had kept in their homes and such were becoming more and more scare. Henry knew that little girl in front of him contained more ADAM in her blood than he had ever seen in his entire life. This is why Henry fully understood why those men risked life and limb at the hands of her protector, for the chance of a taste of a substance that could give them back all that Rapture had stolen from them.
By this point the Big Daddy was weakening. Bullets had pierced his thick suit and it was now hissing atmosphere. Two of the men's guns had gone dry by now, so now they stood further back, holding sections of pipes in their hands. Of the three remaining shooters, two of them ran empty and struggled to reload. Sensing there momentary weakness, the Big Daddy took this moment to go on the offensive, throwing himself forward into the only shooter still firing, crushing him with a crunch against a wall. As the shooter crumpled limply to the ground, the Big Daddy revved up his drill and turned on the remaining men. The sounds of the terrified men and the sickening squelches of the drill tearing through flesh reverberated across the room as the Little Sister sat in the middle of the hallway, unprotected. Heart beating in his chest, questioning his own sanity for even considering it, Henry ran forward and seized the little girl, ignoring her screams as he fled the room as fast as he could, away from the massacre and out of earshot so he could harvest in relative safety.
The process of the harvesting would be something to haunt his nightmares for years, but the end result was enough ADAM to keep back the tide for months to come. With this exotic need taken care of, now Henry spent his days searching for enough food and desalinized water to stay alive. The most reliable source of this was the vending machines, but they required money, which was not something he was exactly rolling in. Foraging was a full time job, he considered it a good day if he was able to have his three square meals of canned meat and cream cakes, but some days he had to go without. He could not leave Fort Frolic, nor could anyone. Ryan had shut down the bathyspheres, and as such everyone who was in Fort Frolic when Rapture died had to stay there. Fights broke out almost every day, former friends just going mad from ADAM withdrawal or just desperate from lack of hope, from knowing that this Paradise had become their tomb. He himself had believed everything Ryan had told him, that Rapture was a city where a man could make something of himself, where he could run a steel corporation without the government reaching their hands in his pockets. Now he thought, taxes or no taxes, he just wanted to see the sun.
Henry kneeled over the bloodied corpse of a man in a red suit as he searched his pockets, looking to see if he had any cash on him. Lying in the puddle of water from the leak, his skin was charred and his hair stood on end. If he had to guess, he would say the poor fellow fell victim to the Electro-bolt plasmid while standing in the water, a tactic that he had seen Atlas's rebels using against Ryan's men during the civil war; it was chillingly effective. Who has the ADAM to spend on plasmids these days, Henry wondered. Everyone, himself included, barely had enough ADAM to keep what they already have, let alone add plasmids to their genetic structure. As he pondered this, Henry heard footsteps coming around the corner. He stood up, Thompson gripped tightly, as an unfamiliar man came into view. He wore a yellow sweater vest, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled back. Unlike most in Rapture, his face looked purely human, with no visible disfigurement due to ADAM withdrawal. In his hand he clenched a revolver.
Without hesitation the unfamiliar man unloaded all the chambers from the hip. Fortunately the man was not much of a shot, and by leaping to the side Henry only caught one round to the side. Still, he gritted his teeth with pain, thinking I do NOT have the money for a healing station. As he raised his own gun, Henry saw the man put away his gun and raise his left hand. Henry paused as he noticed it was covered in hideous boils and hives, and that several small bugs seemed to be crawling on his hands. He instantly recalled Insect Swarm, a plasmid produced and marketed during the war for personal defense. With horror, he knew what was coming seconds before it did.
With a grimace of pain, the man bared both his disfigured forearms and a swarm of hundreds of yellow-jackets burst forth, flying right at Henry. Henry screamed as they flew at his face. He felt like he was being stabbed by red hot needles as they crawled all over him and stung at his eyes, his ears, any exposed skin. They seemed to focus on his eyes, though they tore at anything they could, several crawling in his mouth, attacking his tongue and insides of his cheeks. He even felt them crawling into his gunshot wound, stinging the exposed, bleeding flesh. Blind, he swept at them with his left hand as he opened fire with his right, pointing the gun where he guessed the man to be. As he fired, he felt a crushing blow smack his hand, his ribs, his hip, the back of his head. The man in the yellow vest was attacking him with some heavy object, striking him with enough force to crack his ribs. In his fear and panic, Henry swung the gun like a club. Henry felt his gun hit something solid, and the attacks stopped for a second. Looking in the direction that he hit the object, he used one hand to swipe the hornets away from his face long enough to open his eyes. Staggering backwards was the man in the yellow vest with a red wrench in his hand. He stopped himself, then raised the wrench again to attack. Leveling the Thompson with one hand, Henry unloaded what remained of the magazine into the man's chest.
The shots still ringing in his ears, he heard the man collapse to the wet floor with a splash, and seconds later the hornets relented in their assault and dispersed. Panting, Henry fell to his knees, in utter disbelief of what had just happened. He saw his attacker lying face up several feet away, his yellow vest now torn to pieces and dyed red. Still in agony from his hundreds of stings and gunshot wound, Henry allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment and curse fate. When he opened his eyes, he looked down to look at his reflection in the frigid water. His face was almost unrecognizably swollen, covered in angry red bumps. He could barely see, his eyes tearing up. He coughed heavily, deciding he needed to find a health station soon or he was going to die. He heaved himself up, thinking he should at least take whatever that psychopath was carrying. But when he looked to where the man's body lay, he was shocked to see nothing. Where could he have gone to? Did I just imagine that whole thing? Maybe I'm furthering along in ADAM withdrawal than I thought.
Just then, he heard footsteps to. Oh god no, not now, he thought. He did not have time for another splicer. Looking up, he saw the same unfamiliar man. His vest was in one piece and yellow once again. As he stared in disbelief at the man standing before him, the man raised a hand that glowed blue and was twitching. Sparks jumped between two of the fingers. The man smiled. Looking down, he saw that the man stood at the end of the hall, out of the puddle. Once again, he knew what was going to happen seconds before it did.
"NO!" he yelled as a bolt of lightning sprang from the man's hand and struck the water. Henry shrieked as his muscles jerked and his bones burned. His eyes rolled backwards into his head as his vision was consumed by bright blue light, then blackness.