The Wasteland Of Rapture

Chapter Four - Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire

We descended the stairs with it's, what seemed to be, golden hand rails and thick, blood red carpets. I had a strange question, and it was bugging the hell out of me. Moira had said that Rapture was over three hundred years old, but from what I saw from it, although that was just one room, it seemed like it was nearly twenty. I voiced my question to Moira but she just shook her head and said, "They must have refurbished or something."

I was guessed I just being paranoid, but all the same, it just didn't feel right.

We reached the door, which held the same design as the doors in the light house. I opened the door to find a room, which was easily as big as my house in Megaton, and had a four poster beds in each corner. The booming voice then sounded again, this time saying "We will meet in the morning, but we know you have had a very long journey to get to Rapture, so please put your feet up and have a good night's rest."

We all suddenly yawned at once. I shook it off with a laugh and made my way to the nearest four poster bed. The curtains were made to match the carpet and felt like silk. I climbed onto the bed and took off my armour and put everything away into my Pip-Boy, bar a Plasma Pistol. I climbed under the heavy covers and dreamt of dancing Super Mutants and Elder Lyons in a leotard.

.~.~.~.~.

I awoke with a headache. I tried to get up but I couldn't move my head, or arms, or any part of my body. I managed to open my eyes to see the glass ceiling above. I could see many different marine animals and lights just above it; it looked like the night sky and the fish were stars hovering over my head. The headache steadily grew worse and worse until I finally broke the silence around me. I screamed. I vaguely heard a sound behind me.

My eyes started to swim and a blurry figure came into view. Suddenly the pain from my head lowered until it wasn't even there. My eyes started to droop, but I was determined to stay awake long enough to find out what was going on. I mumbled something along the lines of "Whatsssss gon' on?" to the figure in my view.

A woman's high voice replied, "You, my friend, are in an operating room. You're in here because you need to be given some special equipment for the job you will be assigned. It will be hard, sonar will be giving you five injections of something called Plasmids and they will help you. You'll need to be conscious for them."

She drew out a whole syringe full of a red substance and checked for air bubbles. She then proceeded to—very quickly, inject it straight into my arm and into a vain. She released it all into my blood stream and then took the syringe out again. She did this another four times, all as quick as the first one and with different bottles. It was almost like she was showing me what to do on the first time. After the final bottle she gave me a quick injection of clear liquid and then told me what these 'Plasmids' were.

"I'll be quick because of the morphine I just injected to you. The first was called: Natural Camouflage and will make you invisible if you stay still long enough. Just don't try to shoot anyone if you're doing it. The second and third were something called Sport Boost. The first one was a basic and the second was a bit more advanced. The effect of Sports Boost is to make you faster. The forth was Incinerate. What Incinerate does is it makes you summon fire to throw at people or explosives just by clicking your fingers and throwing the fire. The third is Winter Blast which means you can freeze things by splaying your hand. Plasmids are always used with your left hand." My eyes started to close and I heard her say, "'Night" before dozing off.

.~.~.~.~.

I woke up and, judging by the snores either side of me, I guessed the others were still asleep. I grinned like the manic and said to myself, 'This is my chance'. I pulled a gun out of my inventory and loaded it. I pulled back the curtains to check if they were all sleeping. They were. I cocked my gun and aimed. I fired.

"Super Mutants at our gates! A whole army of them! Run!" I fired my Cap Gun again and again till they all had woken up. The Raider was up first, grabbing her Plasma Rifle looking down its sights. Jabsco was up milliseconds later with his flamer, and finally Moira came up with a frag grenade, pin between her teeth and ready to blow anything up.

At this point I was on the ground laughing my arse off. All eyes were on me as I laid on the floor in stitches. The commander gave me a ruff kick in the ribs and went over to his bed. Moira just shrugged and got into her jumpsuit. The Raider helped me up and smiled at me, before scowling and storming over to her four poster bed. 'She is an odd one,' was all I thought.

We all changed and, by the time Jabsco was done, the voice had spoken again. "Would you please make your way through the door to the north and go into your own separate room?" We obeyed and went through a corridor leading to four doors.

We each went to our own door. I took the one to the far right and waited for the door to open. The voice, once again, said something. "Please make sure you have a door to yourself. The door will open in three... Two... One." And the doors opened. I saw Moira give me a wave and I stepped through the door.

I walked into the room and found a man sitting at a terminal, looking at security cameras. A woman was also sitting at a terminal, looking at some kind of report. As the door shut, the man looked and saw me there.

"Hello and welcome to Rapture. My name is John Harper. Before you go into the preparation room, we will need to have a look at your wrist device and make an adjustment." I remembered the voice from somewhere. I obviously must have looked uncertain, because he added, "I will only put a microphone and input a radio signal into it. Just so we can contact you."

I reluctantly held out my arm and the man grabbed a tool box next to him. He began to tweak with my Pip-Boy and added a small component. He spoke into it. "Test, one, two. Rapture is owned by Ryan. Two, one." I heard his voice carry into my head. He let go and closed his tool box.

"So what do you have to trade around here?" I asked, remembering the reason we came down here.

"We have many things to trade, but first you will need to do a small job as a trade for what we have given you."

"What do you mean given me? You haven't given me or my friends anything except a bed to sleep in, which we are grateful for," I lied. I obviously knew about the Plasmids, but he didn't know I knew... If that made any sense, I thought grimly.

"No, no. We have given you much more. Do me a favour and click your fingers." I knew what was going to happen, but I humoured him. I clicked my fingers and watched in slight amazement as a small flame sat in my hand. The flame grew and reached the size of a tennis ball before stopping. At the same time I felt a feeling of warmth fall over me. I looked at my Pip-Boy and saw that it only had an outline of it, but the screen turned on when I wanted. It was like I was using a stealth boy, but not needing to reload after an hour. I walked and saw that, when I moved, the invisibility state that I was in vanished.

"There is another plasmid that you can use. Just think of the word freeze." I did as I was told, again, knowing what was going to happen, and my hand suddenly had a sheet of ice around it. I could still move it, but it was an odd feeling. I splayed my hand and the chair that I was aiming at turned to ice. "My, my. It seems like you know what to do. Now we have gone through the plasmids, you should know that we have also given you a dose of something called a gene tonic. The ones we gave you allow you to move faster than you ever have before."

I had a nagging question in my head and asked, "Have the others got these? And what job, exactly, do you want me to do?" I asked the question quickly, trying to get out of this room. I felt very uneasy around this guy, whoever he was.

"Well, we gave the girl with the strange armour the same "gifts" as you, due to the fact that she will be accompanying you. And you will be helping us stop trouble here in Rapture. We will be briefing you in the next hour. Until then you must prepare yourself and your partner for your job. Please meet your partner in next room."

I had to ask one more question before I went.

"What are you going to do with Moira and Jabsco?"

"Moira has told us that she is good with surface computers, so she will be helping us with our computer research. The commander will be enrolled into our Big Daddy program. Now hurry along."

I went through the door into a room chamber with a big metal door at one end, two beds and a table full of food. It also had another door on the other side of the wall. It opened and out came the Raider. She had changed out of the Raider's amour and into a type of amour I had never seen before.

It was made of some kind of copper coloured metal plating and covered every inch of her, but not her head. It looked very flexible and thick at the same time. She looked over at me, then made a bee line to the pile of food on the table. I quickly met her half way as I realised how hungry I was. We both started to eat until we were quickly full. After five minutes of solid eating we finally sat down onto one of the beds. I laughed at the Raider, as she had a blob of cream on her cheek.

"What?" she said, almost threateningly. I realised that that was the second thing she had ever said to me. I quickly wiped the cream off her cheek and said to her, "What's your name again?"

"Rachel. Yours is Liam, right?" She asked back. I nodded and we left it at that.

About an hour after we went into the room, I jumped as voice came from my Pip-Boy. Rachel just laughed a soft laugh that didn't fit her as a Raider. The voice of John Harper said to us, "Please enter to the submarine to your left and wait inside until it is safe to exit. The journey will take approximately ten minutes. Please enjoy your ride with Riddle Submarines." So we sat down on the benches and starred out the windows and waited.

.~.~.~.~.

AN: I'm sorry it took so long to get this chapter out. My hard drive crashed on me and I had three chapters done on it. I ended up just writing it on my IPod... Ha-ha. Again, I'm sorry. Not much to say except that I'm writing the next chapter as we speak (type) and please review!

A special thanks to sarcasticrock86 for Beta(ing?) this chapter and being so awesome in the meantime!

Till next time,

Umbra-Luna :) :P