To the Reader, I hope you will join me on this freehanded adventure! Bioshock is one of my all time favorite stories, so I will try to stick to that style of storytelling in honor of the story itself. Thank you for your time and now would you kindly enjoy.

Act I:

Time, is it an illusion or is it a frequency that binds it all together? You can change the variables, change the story but no matter the cause, it is time that will remain the same.

"The only truth I have found is that no matter the plot; the protagonists' final test is time." - Rosalinda Lutece

It was 11:48 am, Sunday 1978; a fresh cold mist rose off the port side of the deck. This reminded me of what we were headed for, Southern waters. With that being said there was definitely no chance of a Carribean bay for weeks. Even less of a chance of an enjoyable meal. Mornings like this take me back to me being a kid. It was my Dad's way of life that lead me to believe in tales and search for treasures. After WWII I grouped up with a fee old sailors and became a wanderer.. Then the news about this place began to spill into every harbor we docked. A city... No Gods, No kings. Silly, is what is was.

But For those who were damned to that detritus, the sunken castle, they deserved every part of their despair! After it came out that Lady Patricé Tennenbaum confirmed the rumors of the dystopian wreckage, a horror of a science experiment gone mad? True? Treasure hunters, and men like me who had seen death came from far and wide for the guts; and not only to unearth crazy contraptions. We came for the legend. The Adam. Spme came to sell it, others wanted to try it.

It was a new drug, one that made you have the powers of God. Not to mention it came power packed with a high that'd make the growing drug crisis obsolete. It would hand the largest suppliers a fresh market and if it ever got regulations the demand would become infinite. Look, I never said I had any ethics, ok? This shit is supposed to be the next wave and these German fuckers are offering the highest pay. Im notsure how. The war basically took their funds. But they buy this shit wholesale, above market value, so if they are waking Hitler up atleast I'm getting rich before the fallout.

Dr. Eleanor Lamb sits down there locked up still trying to play Mother Goose to that city, in a dying machine profitting off of all of it. Since she showed them where to find adam the legal buyers owe her 15% royalties. Ill be honest this is my second trip down to that fucking pit of anguish; and I'm more nervous than first time.

A Blue light waves over our horizon followed by grey static. thunder and lightning erupt in every inch of the atmosphere and I begin to feel faint and nauseated.

In front of me I see a beautiful woman. Eyes bronze with flowing red hair she is an angel. That's when I lost my consciousness.

"Percy!"

I felt doped I had passed out hard. How long I wasn't sure there was a thick fog over the sky now.

"Percy!" A deckhand called again.

I scurried up, put on my knickers and ran up top. To my dismay the entire ship is docked to an ice shelf, frozen to this godforsaken light house in the middle of the damn sea.

"We shouldn't be near South enough to hit Ice? And is that the bloody light house to the trash heap below? We were surely two days out?"

"Strange storm blew over and we all ran for the barracks, came back out and here we were."

The shiphand shows me extensive damage to the bow, we will need repairs or we are stuck on this shelf. I'll have to check the Lighthouse for an items I could salvage for repairs. Or... worste case we take that damn death bubble into the city and gather supplies. God forbid.

"Alright!" I exclaimed, "you guys stay here while I look around for scrap metal maybe we can fashion a fix. In the meantime call for Dr. Lamb and prepare the diving bell to retrieve the specimen."

The deal was agreed upon so I gathered my trinkets and necessities and approached the tower. Funny, I remember this door being a strong bronze? Seems now to be maybe marble. Perhaps it was plated, yes that had to be it, and the weathering has removed that shell? In three weeks... I enter the room and for a moment I am stone cold frozen. No longer the face of Andrew Ryan, but a statue of a woman in blue, her hair was neck length and she had a gaze that would melt the film scene to butter. This is not The lighthouse we had been excavating!

Above the statue there were words etched in fine marble ... "The offering is a choice. One of Life or Death"

That was more than chilling. I need to find supplies, I am not comfortable with this location. On the second floor I am greeted by the same woman I saw before I fainted. Only she looks older. Sitting in a chair next to a man who could her twin.

"Um,hello"

"I do say, he doesnt seems to be aware of the changes"

The male lead off.

"Of course he isn't, nothing has even happened"

The woman remarked.

" you mean it didn't happen" he shot back

" But this time" she started

"It will" he finished.

"Undoubtedly"

These two were nutjobs and i was feeling disoriented.

"Who are you people"

"The question is who are you?"

The woman stood and walked towards me.

"And what do you choose?"

Said the man in background

"Life or Death?" She gazed into my eyes

"The Bird?" He says

"Or the Cage?"

She whispered deep into my soul.

A lightbulb bursts... and inthe flash the travelers are mysteriously gone. I'm now thoroughly convinced my crew has spiked my Vodka.

My nose is bleeding..

Shaken from my core, I decide it is time to leave this building of spirits or what have you. It's only then I notice out of the corner of my eye, behind the wall the male traveler was leaning on there is a large metal plating. it would do the job we needed for the patch. No bolts though. Not sure how this this is so attached to this god damned wall.

Across the room there is a small statue of goat. Emblazened with the words " At the heart of the fire there is a single flame "..funny because a single flame actually starts from an ember. Sounds like a riddle ...Oddly enough.. "wait..yeah this is an altar" I need embers. But why do I need embers?...just what do you do?

I gather some straw brush from a corner with a kerosene lamp as well. I should be able to make plenty of small ember piles if I can find a source of fire. Ill need to return to the ship.

Back out at the ship my two crewmates seem to be nowhere in sight. I scream for them. Maybe, they decided to go ahead and enter the diving bell of course!

None the less we have have the supplies I need to solve this riddle and easy my affixation. I enter the large marble door again, the strange judging face of the woman glaring at me. Daring, high cheek bones, beutiful but terrifying. I make sure to pass quickly as not to endure the intimidation it strikes in me. Coming into the room with the altar and I craft my effigy. Once it gets thick and smouldering i throw it in the altars bowl. As if it were clockwork i begin to here the sounds of activation of gears. A steam whistle , thanks to my extensive time learning the language of music, plays the notes i recognize as C-A-G-E.

The metal wall creeks upward and is now exposed and im face to face with a machine like chair implanted on thick ice. The room became twice as frigid. This door must have been sealed for decades! But the chair looked like something out of one of those new films of the future! A Snap and rumble. I'm no dummy that was the marble door above I'm locked in. That chair... its like the bubble from the city ..from Rapture. "What in the?"

"Hello?? Come in hello?"

A small radio attached to a stand in front of the chair let off with a harsh static.

Again, "I'm showing someone opened the velo-route... are you their! This is an S.O.S!"