DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY BIOSHOCK CHARACTERS, PLACES, ETC.
Chapter One - The Plane Crash
Lydia Watson felt the kickback of the shotgun and wasn't sure if it had been the gun or the Splicer until she saw the deformed body fall to the ground, limp with a hole in his head. The other Splicers ambushed her from all sides of the Farmer's Market. Lydia's hand became warm with the plasmid Incinerate and concentrated on powering it up as she dodged a blow from a crowbar.
Her ears filled with the screams of a female splicer to her left as she threw the fireball in that direction and cocked her gun. Another Splicer ran behind her and shot her in the back of the leg with a pistol. Lydia screamed in pain, but managed to turn around and shot a bulled into the ribcage of the armed ADAM addict. A large hole replaced the Splicer's heart and lungs as it gasped for air for only a few seconds, then breathed its last. Lydia couldn't even tell by the corpse whether this Splicer had been a man or a woman. She dropped the last three Splicers with ease of plasmids and then the adrenaline began to wear down. She winced in pain as the warmth of blood dribbled down her leg and into her shoe. She turned her head to see the wound and decided to stitch it up where she was.
Lydia pulled out a medkit and grabbed the needle-nose pliers. She was accustomed to being shot, but she knew that she would never get used to the pain of pulling the bullet out. The feeling of the cold pliers inside her muscle made her shiver and the pain shot up her leg and into her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She felt the pliers scratch against the small metal bullet and with one painful swipe, yanked the bullet out. Lydia was forced to swallow her scream so as to not call more Splicers her way. Her eyes watered as she looked up at the torn signs around the Farmer's Market. The red cloth looked as though it was reaching down to her in a worthless comfort.
Lydia threw the bullet aside and pulled out the alcohol and stitches and quickly stitched the dime sized hole in her leg. She also squeezed a few drops of ADAM out of a closely-guarded syringe she kept on her at all times. This would cause the wound to heal much quicker than if she had left it alone. The searing pain had left her breathless as the pressure dissipated from her being. She sat with her back against a store counter for a few minutes, regaining the breath that had been stolen.
Lydia looked around at the Farmer's Market, reminiscing about what Rapture had looked like when she was young. The signs were a brilliant red with gold lettering and the store shelves were filled with cheeses, meats, bread, and anything one could imagine. She remembered how busy the market was on a daily basis, with all of the food being grown in Rapture. The entire marketplace sounded of murmurs of potential buyers and the occasional groan of a Big Daddy.
Lydia snapped into consciousness by the sound of a real Big Daddy and felt her heart begin to race and rise to her throat. She attempted to swallow the pounding organ, but to no avail. Looking around, she noticed that she could hide inside a walk in freezer behind her. She stood up quickly and sprinted to the freezer and closed the door nearly the whole way. The rancid smell of old meat choked her but she did not run. She peeked through the crack in the door and saw the yellow lights of the big daddy suit. The Bouncer series Big Daddy did not look like a scuba suit, but rather a metal monster that towered over the tallest of Rapture inhabitants.
"Look Mr. Bubbles," the metallic but sweet voice of the Little Sister rang out. Lydia's throat slowly closed tightly. "Here are some angels who need our kisses!" The girl came into Lydia's view.
Little Sisters were always clad in a pink dress with four white buttons. Their hair was pulled back and a bow sat on the top of their head. They looked almost like a normal little girl, other than their eyes which glowed with a brilliant light. Always on their person, the Little Sisters carried a syringe like gun with a container for the ADAM they collected. The container had a baby bottle top where the little girls could drink the ADAM they sucked from the recently deceased.
Lydia waited for what seemed like an eternity while the Little Sister drew the ADAM out of each one of the Splicers that she had killed singing to the bodies. The Big Daddy stood watch for any Splicers that may have heard them. ADAM is the fiber of Rapture, intertwining with every being, making them who they are. The Little Sisters gather the ADAM and the Big Daddy protects her from harm. Splicers are ADAM addicts, as the life liquid is extremely addicting, and whenever injected into the body, it rewrites one's DNA. The reason that most inhabitants of Rapture are Splicers is because they had injected themselves so many times, they began to become deformed. Another reason that some Splicers are so grotesque is the Rapture surgeon, J.S. Steinman, who became obsessed with Picasso-like surgeries for residents.
ADAM was first discovered by a man working at the Rapture docks who had his hand crippled during one of the wars on the surface. The sea slug he had found had bitten him and when he awoke the next morning, he found that he could move his hand. Brigid Tenenbaum, a lead scientist during WWII in the death camps, wanted to explore questions that she had that the surface would not help her explore. After coming to Rapture and hearing of this instance, she attempted to test the sea slug, but it did not produce enough ADAM for testing.
After much testing, Tenenbaum found that when the sea slug was imbedded in a host's stomach lining, the regurgitation of the sea slug produced twenty times the ADAM than normal. Unfortunately, no Rapture resident volunteered for these tests, so Tenenbaum used the little girls from the orphanage to test. This is what created the Little Sister, and as long as the sea slug remains embedded into them, they will remain a nearly indestructible little girl.
Lydia remembered vaguely when ADAM was discovered as her father was one of the few individuals who worked with Tenenbaum. Her mother had worked in the Market as a grocer, and they made ends meet without worry.
The booming sound of the Bouncer's footsteps became faint and Lydia quickly moved out of her hiding spot, breathing in the fresh air once again. She saw at her feet what she had originally come to the Market for, a can of soup. She quickly bagged as many cans as she could and took a few secret passages back to her apartment.
She closed the large metal door in the front of her apartment and placed her gun against the wall. Her apartment was rather large and one of the few apartments that weren't leaking or filled with bodies and broken pieces of furniture. Lydia considered herself lucky in finding this apartment. The floors were hardwood and the windows to the ocean replaced the walls in this apartment. Lydia could look out of her room and see a number of bright neon signs like "Fort Frolic" and "Fontaine Fisheries." Unfortunately, the city was in disrepair and the only life outside of these windows was the numerous sea creatures that weaved through the metal buildings.
She walked up the stairs to her living room which was simply a couch, a coffee table, and a small TV that was linked with other televisions throughout Rapture. Surprisingly, Andrew Ryan would send out the occasional message which he always deemed, "of vital importance" but was actually out of boredom. Other than that, the television remained off. Lydia moved from her living room to her bedroom which was the larger of the two rooms.
The floor was hardwood, but bore a large rug underneath the bed. The bathroom adjacent to the bedroom was tile flooring and fogged glass walls. On the opposite of the bed was a large wardrobe brimming with clothes, and a desk with a number of TV screens and a keyboard. Lydia used this desk to know what is going on in Rapture and hacked a few of Ryan's security cameras so that she could watch different parts of the city. This also helped her when she would go out for supplies, knowing when the Splicers were far away from her destination. She had no problem killing the deformed beings, but she knew that the amount of ammo in Rapture was finite and she did not want to waste them if she could help it.
Lydia had a number of guns that she cleaned daily to keep them from possibly jamming. Yes, she had a number of plasmids intertwined with her DNA, but even those used Eve Hypo to restore the ability's power. Every use of the plasmid almost felt like it was taking a small portion of Lydia's life away and it was replenished after she injected herself with the glowing blue liquid. Her arsenal was held in a reinforced walk-in safe along with a myriad of ammunition. She always kept it locked in the instance that a Splicer broke through her security and got inside of her apartment.
Lydia turned on the screens at her desk and started going through the camera images. She sat in her desk chair and rolled over to her end table, where she had a record player and placed the arm on the record. After going through her camera's scattered around Rapture, she walked into her bathroom and drew herself a bath. As the steam fogged her mirror, she stood in front of it looking at herself, into her soul.
Lydia had been known around Rapture as the child with one green and one blue eye. It was a birth defect on the surface, but with ADAM, her parents could have given her any eye color they desired. They decided to let Lydia decide whether she wanted to change her eye color, but she declined. She always believed that in a city which strove for "perfection" and "sameness," a utopia if you will, she did not want to fall into the redundancy. Her philosophy ended up saving her life as she watched her family and friends fall to the addictive tendencies of ADAM. Combined with the youth that the fluid gave the user, it was already addicting. Psychology and physical addiction created the Splicers, and Lydia was one of the few individuals in Rapture who did not "splice" into a stupor.
She stared at her face, questioning why anyone would want to change themselves. Her burgundy hair fell in waves to her shoulders. She had a heart shaped face and a small nose. Her lips were not thin but not plump either. She was extremely pale, but not pasty. Her breasts were ample and she had an hourglass figure. Her usual attire was a white tank top and denim shorts that were roughly eight inches above her knees.
She looked to her left and saw that the bath was nearly full and turned off the water. She slowly undressed and threw her clothes in the box at the end of her bed. She welcomed the heat of the water as it crept up her body as she slowly lowered herself into the bathtub. She cleaned herself of the sweat and blood of the attack in the Farmer's Market. Her wound stung a little, but she cleaned it off to make sure that there was no chance of infection.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of static on the television in her living room. Lydia jumped out of the bathtub and quickly wrapped herself in a towel and made her way into the living room. The white fuzz on the screen was replaced with the face of Andrew Ryan at his desk. He looked into the camera as he spoke with his typical urgency.
"It has come to my attention that a particular woman is murdering the inhabitants of this city," he began. "While I appreciate the amount of ADAM I get from the bodies, this city was not built by savages, ravishing each other as parasites would do. This woman has been here for a long time and does not appreciate what this city is. If you kill this woman, I will give the lucky person a large amount of ADAM."
How dare him! Lydia thought as her fists clenched. He has the nerve to call me a parasite when he wants me dead! Andrew Ryan, you are the biggest hypocrite that I have ever had the misfortune to know. As soon as I find you, I am planting my fist into your ribcage and pulling out your blackened heart!
"Again I would like to remind those citizens who follow the laws of Rapture that approaching a Little Sister is punishable by death," Ryan continued with no emotion. "It is not to my liking to have such a punishment, but I cannot have the essence of Rapture being used without regulation. Also, the Big Daddies are programmed to kill anyone who attacks their Little Sister and that is not my choice.
"I say this for the safety of my city and all of those who call this place your home. For those parasites who expect us to give them a share, you will eventually meet your demise. That I promise."
The TV screen went to static and then black as the anger rose in Lydia's body. She imagined his heart in her hand and a Little Sister drawing ADAM from his bleeding corpse. She was so infuriated by the message that she threw her towel off of her body and redressed in her blooded clothes. Determined to send her own message to Ryan, she threw on her shoes, put her shotgun into her safe, and selected her favorite weapon, two curved short blades she had smuggled from the surface for her.
Lydia made her way out of her apartment and jogged to the one place that she knew Ryan would be watching on his cameras, Smuggler's Hideout. During Rapture's fall, Ryan found that one of the people in Rapture, Frank Fontaine, was the leader of a large smuggling ring in a part of the city few used. Those people who used Smuggler's Hideout, which is near Neptune's Bounty, worked for Fontaine as smugglers. After Ryan discovered that these workers were smuggling bibles, crucifixes, and many other things, he would interrogate those accused, kill them, and hang their bodies in the Hideout to make an example.
Ryan hoped that using a few smugglers as an example and sending out numerous messages, he realized that the problem had only gotten worse. He had security cameras set up during the day, when no one was there, and gun turrets in attempt to kill as many "parasites" as possible. To this day, though no smugglers remain who aren't Splicers, Ryan still continues to watch this area and remind residents of the repercussions of smuggling.
Lydia believed this place was the best place to get the city's tyrant's attention. Anger was burning every fiber of her being as she made her way to the near other side of Rapture, cutting down a number of Splicers in one swipe of her blade. She wanted to show Ryan that he had no hold over her and she would not bow to his whim. After nearly an hour, she made it to Smuggler's Hideout and to her luck; a Big Daddy was roaming the halls looking for a Little Sister.
Lydia reached down for an Eve Hypo and her stomach rose to her throat. She had forgotten her belt and she only had enough energy for one shot of a plasmid. Her original plan was to shock the Big Daddy with Electrobolt and as he stood paralyzed, she would slice his suit open, killing him. She didn't want to risk missing her shot so she decided to fight him without plasmids.
Lydia found a broken floor tile at her feet and picked it up. She lifted it over her head and threw it as hard as she possibly could at the Rosie series Big Daddy to get its attention. The glowing yellow lights instantly turned red with anger inside the suit. Lydia readied herself to dodge the first blow as Rosie came at her with a rivet gun and began to shoot. She dodged behind a wall and waited until the Big Daddy had to reload its gun.
Lydia capitalized on the moment and raced towards the suited beast, cutting its right hand off with a swipe of her sword. The loud bellow came from the monster, easily five times the size of Lydia as it dropped its gun and darted at her, its hand outstretched. Lydia tried to duck underneath the arm but wasn't fast enough as the Big Daddy kicked her between the legs and lifted her up to where it could grasp her neck with its enormous hand.
The next thing she knew, Lydia was feeling her trachea closing as the Big Daddy's hand closed slowly around her neck. She had dropped her swords in the scramble and they were well out of reach. Thinking quickly, she decided to use her last blast from a plasmid on the Rosie's face. She dared not to use Electrobolt because she would be electrocuted along with the Big Daddy, and its hand would close harder. She flicked her hand to Incinerate and quickly threw a fireball into the Rosie's mask, not bother charging the fire. Luckily, the Big Daddy released its death grip on her and she fell to the floor, gasping for breath.
As Lydia crawled to her swords, coughing and gasping for air, she heard the booming sound of the suited giant behind her. She quickly grabbed one of her swords and stood up as the Big Daddy bounded towards her. This time Lydia was fast enough to dodge the fatal fist of the massive creature. The blow from the Rosie was so hard, the metal walls of Smuggler's Hide out will forever have a crater which Lydia's blood nearly painted. As she dodged the blow she sliced the side of the leather-tough suit, opening a hole revealing… a human torso.
Lydia had never known what was inside the suits of these Big Daddies. She now realized that Ryan had taken the life of someone and damned them forever inside this suit. Now, Lydia didn't want to kill this Big Daddy out of anger, but to end its suffering. She climbed up to an overhanging second story as the Rosie rounded the corner and began to search for her. Just as it walked directly over Lydia's hiding spot, she jumped off the balcony and jammed her sword right underneath the metal mask of the Big Daddy.
The groan of the Big Daddy became silent and the lights on the face, once red in anger, had turned back to yellow and then completely black. Lydia stood up from her spot and saw what she had done and wanted to see who this person was. She grabbed the arm of the Big Daddy and rolled it on its back. Slowly, she cut the bottom of the mask off, lifted it, and gasped in horror.
The Big Daddy was once a man. His face had become pale, sunken in, and mostly deformed and below his neck had fused with the suit. It was an extremely grotesque sight for the simple fact that this man had a life at one point and it was stolen away in this suit. As a Big Daddy, he was an empty shell of his former self. His brain was rewired to serve only Andrew Ryan, protect his Little Sister, and kill anyone who stood between him and his ADAM. After the sadness and pity passed Lydia's mind, she moved to extreme anger. Just then the sound of a security camera filled her ears.
Lydia grabbed the left arm of the Big Daddy and pulled hard in the direction of the camera sound. The body moved about an inch every time she would pull. After a few moments of trying to pull a massive corpse, she decided to pause and rethink what she was doing. After looking around for only a second, her eyes were caught by an Eve Hypo lying underneath a box of smuggled bibles. Lydia lifted the box and grabbed the syringe. Just as quickly, she stuck the large needle in her arm and pushed down the plunger, injecting the glowing blue liquid into her body causing her arm to glow slightly. She felt her body regain its plasmid abilities. She flicked to Telekinesis and lifted the body over to the security camera. She dropped it with a boom and stepped into the view of the camera.
"Ryan!" she yelled into the camera, "I know you can see and hear me. I want to show you who now has a purpose to kill you! You have destroyed this once glorious city. ADAM is the downfall of everything that is Rapture, and you are the source of ADAM. You say that murder is the act of parasites yet you want my head on your mantle! You have destroyed so many lives including this man!"
She lifted the back of the helmet of the big Daddy in front of the camera.
"Are you taking men from the surface and turning them into your slaves? Did this poor man have a family? You are a tyrant Ryan. You speak of no gods or kings but you think yourself both! You will fall by my hand, Andrew Ryan. That I promise…
"Oh," Lydia's voice lightened in pride, "If I can take down a Big Daddy with only swords and Incinerate, I don't think your precious inhabitants would be able to kill me. We will be in touch…"
Lydia left the view of the camera and began to walk back to her apartment. Fighting a Big Daddy had taken a large chunk of her energy and she was extremely fatigued. As she passed them, she picked up her swords and slowly walked out of Smuggler's Hideout, passing a few of Ryan's "example" corpses. No sooner had she left the Hideout, she heard Ryan's voice over the Rapture Intercom.
"A parasite thinks that she can threaten my life," echoed the voice of Rapture's tyrant. "She calls me a hypocrite and an oppressor and promises to be the one to end my life. Citizens of Rapture, the woman I spoke of earlier is threatening everything we stand for. She would have you give her your ADAM and throw it into the sea. She wants to kill the very person who built this city. The bounty on her head is higher, kill Lydia Watson."
From all around her, Lydia began to hear joyous screams of Splicers in adjacent rooms. She was forced to quicken her pace or risk being attacked by a horde of deformed-humans with guns. As she ran, she began to hear footsteps behind her and moved to a sprint. An eternity passed before she was in the safety of her apartment with the large door closed behind her. She slumped to the floor to regain enough stamina to make her way to her bathroom where she rinsed herself off in the bathtub she had forgotten to drain.
After she was mostly clean she placed her blades in her vault and locked it shut. Lydia squeezed the last ounce of energy to drag her feet to her bed and pull the covers up to her shoulders. Her head hit the pillow and Lydia's eyes closed into sleep.
"…plane crash," Lydia heard from her television screens. She awoke with a start and fumbled over her sheets which she had inadvertently made a cocoon around herself. After she crawled to the screens, she looked at the screen that was for the Bathysphere entrance to Rapture, the only way in or out of the city.
She saw a lone sub surface from the depths of the ocean. In front of the door was a man she hadn't recognized as well as a Splicer woman. Lydia tried to zoom into the submarine, but the light inside had been shut off and she could not see inside. Just then she saw the man being torn in half by the Splicer's scythe-like blades she held in each hand. The carcass fell backwards, into the water and shockingly sunk into the abyss. Then she heard the voice of the Splicer call to the submarine.
"Is it someone new?" said the scratchy voice. After no reply, the Splicer screamed a piercingly loud and jumped on the submarine and began clawing at it with her weapons, tearing large gaping holes in it. After a few moments, she gave up and jumped out of sight.
Lydia watched closely as she saw the Bathysphere's door open and heard a curious voice over a radio. "Would you kindly pick up that two way radio," it said in a heavily Scottish accent. She had only heard about this guy they call Atlas who had simply appeared a few days after Frank Fontaine's death. Her eyes finally met movement as a well-built man left the submarine. For some reason, she lost the voice of Atlas from the radio but knew that he was speaking through the radio that the man had. Was this man the only survivor from the plane crash? Lydia didn't know about faith, but she knew about fate. She wondered why that man survived a crash when no one else did. She wondered what part he would play in Rapture. Moreover, how long would he survive without someone who knew the city? Lydia had to make a choice.