Rapture's Ascent
Chapter one; Opening Pandora's Box
The room was dark and dank; the smell of blood, seawater, and grime filled the halls with its odor. Desks and chairs were strewn about the room, thrown out of the way to accommodate a more menacing contraption that dominated the room. Wires covered the floor, connecting a ten foot glass chamber to a generator, and to various tubes and canisters. Most of the few lights that functioned were focused about the machinery, lighting every surface while the rest of the room went without.
A tall, lanky man stood over a desk that was cluttered with papers. He wore a sweat-drenched dress-shirt, open on the first few buttons, his black dress slacks torn and greased from his labors, and his shoes were long ago cast away. He wore an ivory mask that covered the right half of his face; his black hair covered his eyes, slick with sweat. He muttered constantly under his breath, his words hushed but quick. The hands that he gripped the desk with were covered in frost, ice crystals crackling around his fists.
"Reach the land. Land-ho. Need an out can't stay here. Too close, too stuffed, to stiff. Need to get out. Out. Out out out out OUT OUT OUT!" His words echoed about him as he raised his arms flinging papers everywhere. "Is it ready? Ready ready ready?" The man vanished in a flash of red mist and snowflakes as the air shimmered in the room. Another burst of blue revealed the man at the entrance to the machine, "Make me strongerfasterbetter. Fix me," He opened the door, stepping inside. The door closed behind him as a humming filled the room, the generator rattling as it surged power through the cables.
"Fix me. Make me stronger. Faster. Better. FIX ME!" The machine's roar made the walls shake as electricity sparked from exposed wires, placing an aura about the machine that almost looked arcane in nature. The man in the machine began roaring in pain as energy surged through his body, causing the glass tube to glow.
As the light filled the room, the electricity began arcing off the walls, generating heat that caused the puddles around the bolts to evaporate immediately. As the machine reached its critical energy output, the sound of glass shattering erupted from the tube as the man was thrown from the contraption, his body slamming into the opposite wall as the machine dimmed, its use expended.
Silence leaked into the room as the stillness dragged on. Finally, the man opened his eyes, surveying the damage around him. His desk was still smoldering from a rogue bolt of electricity that torched his papers. He stood warily, his body in immense pain. The entire corner of the room that he was hurled into was frozen, with ice coating everything.
He steadied himself, then reached into his mind to teleport himself across the room. However, instead of snowflakes bursting around him, a soft white light glowed around his right hand. As the glow brightened, a glowing oval appeared in front of him. As he stepped in, a bright light shown across the room by the shattered machine. His foot crossed the threshold of the oval light and stepped down onto the ground across the room. He pulled his body through and found himself staring up at the machine that had thrown him against the wall.
He turned to face the portal that he had crossed through, then waved it away with his hand. He held up his hand and watched as another appeared in front of him and above him on the balcony. With glee he stepped through it and appeared upstairs. Wordless minutes were spent as he tried out his new ability, jumping through portal after portal, spanning he room in seconds, then learning to move the portals to swallow him while he stood still. Light flooded the room with each creation of a portal.
Finally, the man turned towards the machine, and appeared in front of it. "Free. I'll be free. Free of the underworld. Free." He murmured as he set to work fixing it. He worked diligently as he carefully crafted the machine back to its original state. "Fix it. I'll fix it. I'll free others. I'll show others." The man finally stepped back as he glanced at the repaired contraption, with all but the glass tubing repaired.
The man raised his arms as a large portal opened up behind the machine. He began moving it forward to take the machine to his desired location, when he heard a slow thumping. He turned to see the door behind him open as a giant gloved hand held it for a small girl. The girl must have been eight years old, in a little purple dress and a large syringe in her hand. The towering goliath growled behind her as it stared at the man. The goliath looked as if it were an old scuba-diver. Its head bore an old rusty helmet with many small viewports, the entire helmet braced with thick metal wires. Two large tanks hung on its back as it hunched forward, arm ending in a massive hand, the other in a large drill.
The man began stepping backwards slowly as the giant growled louder, pulling the small girl back. The girl spoke, "Mr. B? I'm scared." The giant stepped forward and roared, then charged at the man. In a rush of motion, the giant sped through the man as he disappeared in a flash of white light. The giant was carried forward into the machine, crashing through it into the portal.
A blaze of electricity surged through the machine as the giant's drill punctured the generator, churning the current through the contraption and through the giant. The giant's body was wracked with spasms as his body glowed so bright that the man, who had appeared next to the small girl, could not look directly at it. The giant stumbled forward through the portal as it roared in pain.
A car horn screeched as it almost collided with the electrocuted giant that had suddenly appeared in the streets of Sacramento. It grabbed at the wires that covered its body as its size began to increase. The man appeared across the packed street as hundreds of onlookers gazed at the growling, glowing giant. The goliath now towered at least twenty feet tall, the electricity surging through it as its suit began reforming, merging with the giant's body.
The man looked desperately for a way to stop the transformation, then his eyes fell upon the wires that connected the giant to the generator that had now fallen to the ground. He threw his hand forward and summoned a portal that manifested where the wires were, splitting them as it tore open the fabric of space-time.
The wires crackled as the last of the energy surged throughout the giant's body. As the light dimmed, the man gazed up at the figured that towered over him. The giant had bonded to his suit, the rods over his now massive helmet split, and swayed as if alive. The goliath's body shown metal as the arm that formerly held the massive drill ended in a claw-like hand, the fingers coming to points. The other hand was more normal, yet just as massive as the rest of the body.
Immediately the light from within the helmet turned red as the creature roared. The man began backing up quickly when he heard a voice. He turned to see the same little girl, standing where the portal to the undersea room had been, "Mr. Bubbles? What happened to you?" The Goliath turned towards the child in a groan, and reached for her.
Desperately, the man threw up his hands and jumped forward, tackling the little girl through a portal, disappearing in an instant. The giant roared, and began swinging his arms in fury, looking about itself for the child.
Atop a roof, the man stood, holding the hand of a frightened child. He looked down at the whimpering girl and muttered, "Adam adam so much adam what do I do."
The girl stared up at the man, "Please don't hurt me, mister. Please" A tear seemed to roll down her young cheek as her eyes glowed yellow up to the man.
The man tightened his wrists, ice sprouting up his arms as the air cooled, "Not that man I'm not that man anymore. Not going to kill, eat slug, no adam don't need it. Fine how I am I'm free." The man turned away from the girl and gazed down at the raging monstrosity, "Wait here, I'll fix this. My fault, I fix. My machine I fix." The man disappeared in a flash of light.
The monster slammed his claws into a building, tearing glass and rock off the face and raining it down upon the people below. Suddenly, a bolt of ice hit the giant in one of the viewports, blocking it. The goliath groaned, then scraped it off and looked around. Below him stood the man, waving his arms desperately. As the monster reached down, the man disappeared, appearing on a nearby window ledge. The monster slammed his massive fist into the wall, but the man was gone again.
Standing on a nearby car, the man knew he couldn't toy with the beast forever. "Plan need a plan, take down the Big Daddy. Need to take him down, too big to freeze, what do I do?" Suddenly, the man had an idea. Remembering how he severed the wires, the man threw up his arms in an attempt to stop the carnage.
The monster roared, then stopped suddenly as a white light appeared in the middle of its helmet. Suddenly, the light disappeared, revealing an exposed, contorted face, the nose scraped clean off by the apparition of the portal. As the giant threw its head back, throwing the chunk of helmet, nose and all, to the ground below. Another light appeared on the left arm of the monster, tearing at its metallic skin, opening up the arm as the portal split space-time in half. The portals continued appearing and disappearing, chunks of the damaged monstrosity rained down upon the road, the sound of the tearing of metal and flesh filling the air with each portal apparition.
Finally, the goliath stumbled to a stop, leaning against a building. Its frame was a grotesque figure of twisted metal and skin, split and severed in multiple areas. As the man turned away to leave the scene, he heard a soft scrabbling noise, like that of many beetles running along a patch of sand. The man turned back to see the metallic fibers of the monster's suit reaching to other pieces, pulling itself together, repairing the damage done.
In a flash of light, the man was back on the rooftop by the small girl, gazing down at the writhing, living mass of metal and man that was squirming as it reconstructed itself. The man grabbed at his hair, squeezed his head, "Done done what have I done? Created a monster, my machine, my power. Fixed myself, made myself better but fixed that thing and made it stronger. What am I going to do do do do DO DO DO?" The man pulled at the mask on his face. Once bonded to his skin through many teleportations and blasts of freezing temperatures, the mask separated cleanly from the man's now repaired face. "Fixed me fixed me fixed me. Machine fixed me made me all better all better. Stronger faster all better." The man gripped the mask tightly, ice crystals growing over it. Suddenly, the mask snapped easily in the man's hand as it crumbled at his feet, the ice beginning to melt.
The man turned to the little girl who retreated suddenly. She whimpered, then slowly approached the man, "What are we gonna do mister? I think something's the matter with Mr. B."
Over another roar from the beast, the man spoke to the child, "Go go, we're gonna go. I think I know someone to help. Saw him once met him knows what to do. He's got power, he escaped, took some sisters too, I know where to find him, and Tenenbaum."
The girl's face broke into a smile, "You know where to find Mother Tenenbaum? That's great! But what's that man's name you were talking about?"
The man looked beyond the little girl, into a distant memory, "Man who escaped, brought up little sisters, got rid of big daddies, killed lots of splicers. I know the man the man the man. He can help us." A bright light shown in front of the man and the girl, "The man his name I remember his name, saved my life chose to spare me his name." The light grew brighter as the man led the Little Sister through the portal, "His name his name. His name was Jack."
[End of Chapter 1]