Alex ducked into a shadowy alcove as there came the sound of footsteps. '...So tired...' A female voice yawned, he watched as she walked past dragging a metal pipe along the ground. 'Hello?' she wondered as Alex shivered from the cold. 'Darling, is that you?' she demanded before she found him as he broke from where he was hiding. 'Darling!' she emitted a loud laugh as he ran away from her. She appeared to have totally lost her senses. Alex ran ahead and found a dead body on the ground, some kind of whacky harpoon gun clutched in their hands. Scrabbling, he grabbed it and turned on his back, the woman raised her pipe and was about to strike before he pulled the trigger. The spear flew loose and struck the Splicer straight through the neck. With a gurgling choke she became stuck against the wall. Alex sighed loudly as he pulled a pack of spears from the body and swung it over his shoulder. Was everybody in the place like this?

Carlos and Sheva desperately moved through Arcadia, keeping on the lookout for any sign of leakage. They could hear people chatting beyond a few hedges. Suddenly it broke into a commotion. 'Saturnine! Run! Run!' People ran screaming. Carlos and Sheva watched as masked men and women ran in, hurling fireballs. 'This is our territory!' a man yelled before with the sound of bones crunching, they all vanished. Silence fell in Arcadia for a while. Soon the two survivors felt it was safe to emerge from the bushes. Big Mistake. 'You hear that?' Carlos wondered. They could hear the sound of a young girl drawing closer. 'Back in the bush.' Sheva hissed in his ear.
'What?'
'I don't like the feeling I'm getting.' Sheva shuddered. Both of them hid back in the bush as a girl in a filthy purple dress wandered over, her eyes a glowing golden colour. 'What the fuck is wrong with her?' Carlos whispered.
'I don't want to find out.' Sheva replied in an equally low whisper, green eyes widened as she watched. She brushed a loose strand of her brown hair back as the girl stabbed her syringe-like device into a dead body and began drawing up blood. Oh my....Is she...Drinking blood? Sheva and Carlos could only watch from the bush as the Little Sister continued working on the body. She spluttered slightly while drinking before turning to something out of their sight. 'All done, Mr B!' she laughed. There came an answering groan and boot steps that shook the ground.

Alexander opened his eyes slowly, his head hurt terribly and there was a horrible pain in his left wrist. The last thing he remembered was crossing paths with a little girl and then a splitting headache. 'Huh?' He looked to his left, the source of the pain came from a large amount of debris that had landed on him, and a strange syringe full of a red chemica, the needle sticking into his wrist. He very gently tried to pull himself free of it. But the needle was in deep, it dragged the syringe along with his wrist, this also began to shift the debris that was lying on him. Uh-oh... he thought as a large chunk of wood slipped from the pile and began to apply pressure to the needle. Steady now, Alex...You can do this... he thought, feeling sweat build from nerves as he tried to remove the needle, his right arm was still asleep and wasn't replying to the signals his brain was sending it. He shifted slightly, hearing the sounds of footsteps getting closer. The pressure of borrowed time rushed his actions and Alex discovered that fate ( as well as this writer) can be very cruel. Alex let out a scream of pain as the wood slipped and injected the contents into his body. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, he pulled his entire body free and stumbled from the wreckage, his vision blurring, he tripped over an overturned Gatherer's Garden machine and hit the ground again, his breath steamed up as he felt the cold stone of the floor turn to solid ice. Alex lost his energy suddenly and hit the ground unconscious.

'What-the-fuck-was-that?' Carlos asked once the Little Sister and Rumbler left.
'I don't know and frankly...I don't want to.' Sheva added as they decided to further explore Arcadia. 'Wait!' Carlos ordered, calling Sheva back as she started to explore. 'Remember what attacked us when we first got here? There could be more of them. Let's find weapons first.'
'Sure.' Sheva nodded, seeing his logic.

'Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?'
'Urr?' Alex looked up drearily. His vision was still very blurry, weakly he tried to push himself up with his arms, but he shook from the effort and collapsed again. He just wanted to sleep again. 'Please, get on your feet.' The voice asked. Alex looked around for the source of it, his radio had slipped from his pocket and was lying next to him, hissing and crackling with static. With the greatest effort it had ever cost the acrobat, he dragged himself to his feet and picked the radio up. He still felt lethargic and dreary, like he had too much to drink. 'Ahh…You are up at last.' The voice was female, dry and ancient; she spoke in a strong German accent. 'I know that this may all be a lot take in, but you must listen now, you are from the surface, yes? My name is Tenenbaum and I need your help.'
'What do you want?' the acrobat wondered.

'Ha ha! Got myself a gun!' Carlos laughed as he checked the machine gun over. 'What about you Shevs?' he asked and turned around to see Sheva spinning two revolvers through her fingers before slinging them into holsters at her waist. 'I'll be fine.' She replied. 'And don't call me "Shevs"' she turned her back and started to lead the way. 'It makes me think of pancakes.'

Melissa Miller walked through the corridors, she searched for the acrobat, the waitress and the game hunter. The poor unlucky girl found the acrobat and both of them were relieved to see each other. 'Oh, it's you! The stewardess!' Alex gasped as he found her and lowered the spear gun. 'I nearly shot you.'
'That's Ok. I'm glad you're still alive.' Melissa replied. Then there came a loud explosion from down the hall and a girl sobbing. Both of them ran on to find a Little Sister crying over the body of a wrecked Rumbler. An Alpha Series was stalking around, oblivious to the Little Sister's screams. It let out a bloodcurdling roar before smashing through a wall and moving on. Silence, bar the Little Sister. 'Alex?' Melissa wondered as Alex walked over to the girl, she looked up as his shadow fell over her and began to crawl away rapidly into a corner. 'Alex…?' but the acrobat was deaf to the unlucky woman's voice.
'So these little girls are full of…' his voice drifted in and out of focus as he muttered to himself. 'Could get it…But then she'll die…Is it worth her life?' suddenly he made his choice and grabbed the girl, her screams echoed from the room and bounced along the corridors.

'Thank you!' the girl said as she looked up at Alex. Alex flexed his right hand; he just couldn't bring himself to kill the girl for that slug. He had let his soft insides win out over the hard shell and used the plasmid Tenenbaum had sent him to humanely kill the slug. Melissa helped her up into a vent and she vanished inside, on her way to Tenenbaum. 'Alex, I had no idea you could be so sympathetic.' Melissa smiled. Alex contorted his expression into a snarl. 'Don't talk to me about that. You know nothing about me.' He said in a deep growl before they moved on. He stopped as Melissa ran on to take an old, crumpled photo from his pocket. 'Bella…' he said as he looked at his long-dead sister. The sounds of that horrid night still haunted his dreams into adulthood.

A spider Splicer fell with a scream at Sheva's hands as a bullet thudded into his skull. She knocked the gun barrels open and quickly reloaded with anti-personal rounds before continuing to barrage approaching Splicers with them. The cause of the attack? 'Mr B will get you!' The little sister in Carlos' arms. 'Shh…Stop screaming.' Carlos said before his ear drums were damaged again by the little sister's shrill screams. 'Sheva! Hurry it up!' Carlos ordered as Sheva took several steps back, shooting as she went. 'You try doing this then!' she yelled back. 'Carlos!'
'Screw it! Run!'

'Huh...' Alex muttered as he and Melissa explored the nearby apartments. He had just turned over a stack of papers and found something quite intriguing. 'Look at this, Melissa.' Alex said as he picked it up. 'What?' Melissa asked before she came over to Alex and smiled. 'Congratulations Alex.' she said as she took it off him. 'You found a watch.'
'Look at it, you bimbo. It's digital. They didn't have digital watches back in the 1950's!'
'So?'

SO! It means we're not the first outsiders here!' Alex finished before going over a sheaf of soggy papers again. 'Who could it belong to?' he muttered.

'There...You...Go...' Sheva groaned as she picked up the Little Sister and gently eased her into a vent. 'Personally, I don't think that was worth it.'
'Guess you were right-' Carlos began before Sheva suddenly shoved a hand over his mouth and pulled him into an alcove. It wasn't a Splicer. It was something else. To their utter surprise a man in military gear walked past them, looking around with night vision goggles and a modern machine gun. 'Why is he here?' Sheva hissed.