A/N:Without further ado, here's Chapter 5.
Chapter Five: The False Shepherd Deceives the Lamb
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." -Matthew 7:15
I was pretty damn certain this broad was trying to kill me with books. She threw another one at me from above, then ran down the stairs to get a better angle as I struggled to get out of the wreckage of the broken ceiling.
"Hey!" I shouted as one hit me on the shoulder, throwing up a hand to defend myself, "Would you – stop it – WOULD YOU STOP. IT." Unlistening, she picked another one up and started towards me, presumedly to bash me across the face with it. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
She stopped with the book poised at the ready and glared down at me, like she'd never seen a man fall out of the ceiling before. Not like it was my damn fault the construction here was shitty. Her chin was stubborn enough that I wasn't certain any amount of rational explanation was going to help me out. "Who are you?" she demanded.
"My name is DeWitt." I said as I stood up, hoping that wouldn't encourage her to hit me again. "I'm a friend. I've come to get you out of here." even though I loomed over her when I stood, she didn't back down or even looked scared; but she didn't attack me either, so maybe we were getting somewhere. I reached out to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and she took a step back, then scowled and swung with the book.
"Get away." she retorted, even as I caught her wrist easily in one hand and stopped her from braining me. She tried to swing a few more times, then realized it was useless and let her hands fall. When she took another look at me she went quiet, her eyes met mine and something in her gaze broke, and she reached a hand up to my face almost desperately, stopping just short of touching me. The pinky on her right hand was shorter than the rest of her fingers, and covered with a silver thimble.
"Are you real?" she breathed.
Jesus. Not only had they kept her locked up in here, she'd never actually met another person? No wonder she wanted to rearrange my face. If I was the first person I'd ever met in my life, I'd be pissed too. How could you raise someone like that? How could you call yourself a Prophet, and then lock a girl up in a tower and leave her to play with some toys, without any human interaction? That was... that was sick. What did I even say to that?
"I'm real enough," I replied. She seemed to accept that.
That was all the time for conversation we had. Something started whistling, and Elizabeth snatched her hand back, glanced to the left at the machine the whistling was coming from, and whispered, "He's coming," with notes of real terror in her voice.
She put both hands on my chest and pushed me backwards, looking frantically from side to side. "Y-you've gotta go." she said hurriedly.
"Why?" I said, confused by her sudden, almost violent changes in demeanor, but she didn't stop shoving, just turned a hard glare on me.
"You don't want to be here when he ge-" Elizabeth went instantaneously silent and and looked up, as if she could see whatever it was through the ceiling. The cavernous hole in the ceiling I'd made looked a lot more forboding from this side.
"Just a minute, I'm getting dressed!" she yelled, again to my confusion, as if she was talking to a person.
"We gotta get you outta here." I said.
"There's no way out, trust me, I've looked." she looked up again. "Stop it, you're- you're too impatient, that's enough."
Oh man, I was gonna knock her socks off with this one. "What about this?" I said, holding out the key that had been in the box the Luteces gave me.
"What about it." she said, not paying any attention.
"This is the way out, isn't it?"
She sighed dramatically, as if I was the one being a child, then finally looked at me. "What are yo- give it to me!" I let her wrench it from my hand and stood patiently as she looked it over, twirling in her fingers like a precious piece of jewelry. I guess if it was her ticket out of here, it was pretty precious. She was still transfixed by it when something I couldn't see let out a bloodcurling cry. It was mechanical, but under the whir of metal, it sounded almost like... a bird?
Elizabeth turned without a word and dashed over to a large metal door on the side of library that looked as if it hadn't been opened in a while. She fiddled with the key for a moment, then inserted into the disproportionately tiny lock set into the door and stepped back as it started to shake. Gears whirred and turned, and then with a click, the door popped out. Her squeal of glee echoed across the room.
"It's a way out!" she said, peeking through the crack. Hadn't I just said that? I'd just said that. Why don't dames ever listen to a man? They talk right over us, then ask us why we never have anything useful to say.
She didn't even wait for me to follow her, but once the sirens started blaring and the crying of the whatever-it-was turned into screeching, I didn't blame her. I took the stairs behind the door two at a time, almost knocking myself out on the wall when the whole staircase lurched like the place was falling apart. It didn't stop me for long though; whatever was making that noise was something I didn't want to meet.
"It's his job to keep me locked in here," Elizabeth called as we ran, her shorter legs somehow still keeping her ahead of me through the hatchways and down staircases.
"We'll see about that!" I yelled back, trying to sound more confident than the shaking walls around me let me actually be. One of the staircases finally exited back into a part of the building that I knew, which was better except now we had to dodge lumber falling from the ceiling. One would have landed right on Elizabeth if she hadn't jolted to a stop right before it hit the ground.
"Who are you? Why did you come here?" really? She wanted to have this talk now? I could think of a hundred different times and places that would be more appropriate; it wasn't hard to get more appropriate than 'not in a collapsing building with a screeching monster tearing creation down around our ears'. In light of this, I chose not to answer, and she didn't seem upset; just yelled at me to keep going and tore around a corner. The shakes were getting worse the farther we got; one rattled so bad it threw me to the floor and knocked all the breath out of me.
As I struggled to my feet, trying to catch my breath, three jagged tears appeared in the metal wall in front of me, and the screeching became much louder. Whatever had made them was huge, bigger than anything I'd ever seen, and how it was managing to tear holes in the walls dozens of feet above solid ground, I didn't want to think about I yelled for Elizabeth, but she was too far away; instead of figuring out what the claws that made those belonged to, I scrambled to my feet and took off again.
"Call the elevator!" I screamed as loud as I could.
"What?" came the distant response. Great, she probably didn't know what an elevator was. This girl was useless.
"PRESS THE BUTTON."
That one was simple enough for her. When I reached the elevator, she was slamming her fist on the button, then back off as we waited impatiently for the elevator to appear. The hatch to the music room was still open from when I'd been watching her; she looked at it, then pressed her face to the glass, looking shell-shocked.
"What is this..." she murmured, hands splayed against the window. "They were watching me? All this time... why? Why did they put me in here? What am I? What am I?" here she looked at me, voice cracking, but I didn't have any answers for her. I'd been wondering the same thing, but it wasn't like I could stroll up to Comstock and ask. She must've seen the answer on my face, because she turned back to the elevator, her small shoulders slumping.
"You're the girl who's getting' outta this tower." I said finally, because that's all the support I could offer. She didn't acknowledge the answer, just stared at the elevator door intently.
Which exploded outwards when the giant set of claws slammed through it. A head bigger than the frame pushed up to look it. It was metallic, bird-shaped, and inset with a giant, glowing eye that locked in on me, then started pushing its way through the wall. It reached a claw up to grab me – then screeched as the elevator slammed down right on the back of its head. It writhed for a minute, as if in pain, and then was gone, leaving a hole where the machinery had been. Luckily, there was a set of stairs across the gap, one we could reach from where we were standing.
Elizabeth followed me across the empty elevator shaft, then raced in front. "We've got to get out of here! He's tearing the building apart!"
"Careful, Elizabeth!" I yelled back.
"How do you know my name?" again with the questions during impending death. I didn't have the time or the luxury to roll my eyes.
"Not now!" I snapped, dodging more falling debris as I ascended the stairs, holding my pistol at the ready. I didn't think it was going to do a lick of damage against that giant bird thing, but it made me feel a little better. I guessed I just had to hope we'd find a place it couldn't follow us.
When I reached the top, Elizabeth was struggling with another metal door. "Out of the way, let me try." she consented wordlessly, and I heaved it open and held it so she could slip through.
"Which way?" she yelled as I struggled to push it open and get through myself.
"UP." it wasn't much of an option; on the other side, the the walkway ended abruptly to the left in open air. The open space to the left of me sent the same chill of terror through my veins as last time, but I couldn't freeze up if I wanted to not die. Luckily the metal underfoot was rough and there wasn't anything to trip on. Out in the open air, I caught glimpses of the giant bird wheeling through the sky, its glowing red eye glinting off the metal. Elizabeth and I were both wheezing when I caught up to her, and with a sinking feeling I realized we were at the last stop. The path ended at the top of the structure. There wasn't anywhere else to go. Before I could grab her and think of something to do, the floor under me lurched again, lurched the other way, and then disappeared entirely and we were falling through free space. Screaming, Elizabeth reached out to me and I struggled to grab her hand; I caught her, flipped around, and had just enough time to snatch up the skyhook and scramble desperately for a skyline. Miraculously, the magnets yanked us to the line and then we were being dragged through the air at murderous speeds, my arm threatening to pop off as bits of debris flew through space around us.
When the skyline looped around, we had a perfect view of Monument Island collapsing down on itself. The Angel cracked in half down one shoulder, and then as if in slow motion, the head slid off to one side and floated down, trailing sparks from the torn electrical wiring. Below me, Elizabeth was alternately screaming and crying, but her grip on my hand was solid. We flew past the head, past the wreckage, then before I could even process, the skyline was gone, ripped apart, and Elizabeth was torn away from me, flailing.
I fell, fell...
Then, water, and I was drowning, choking-
-Crash, a flash of light-
Screech – angry – reaching, reaching -
Gurgle, cracked eye, and gone-
Black.
–
Someone was pounding on my door. I lifted my head, but I was too drunk to answer.
...no, that wasn't right. I hadn't been drunk in years. Why was the room spinning?
"Mr. DeWitt... MR. DEWITT." The pounding continued. I crawled to my knees. A woman in a skirt and blouse was standing in front of me.
"Release the girl, and wipe away the debt." she muttered, even as someone yelled it through the door. She was looking at the ground tiredly, sadly. The room around me wasn't my room from Colorado. It was... New York?
Something here was wrong.
As I thought it, the room around me changed. The beer bottles disappeared; a set of armchairs became visible in the middle of the room, crowded around a fireplace. A table and chair, with a jacket tossed carelessly over it, stood behind me. The girl didn't move; she continued to stare at the floor.
The pounding on the door, too, hadn't ceased.
"OPEN THIS DOOR." the voice this time wasn't a man's; it was a woman's, cultured and precise, but still demanding. Who was she?
"What do you want with the girl?" I demanded. There was no answer. When I looked back, the young woman was looking at me, her gaze simultaneously pleading and resigned.
I turned, marched to the door, and yanked it open.
"There's no girl here." but all that I saw on the other side was bright, white light.
–
Something was trying to crush me. The pain and the clogged, murky feeling in my lungs swelled up, and I starting coughing violently. Clearly I was dying, because unless I was in hell, there was no way the afterlife included this much pain. I cracked my eyes open, wracking coughs still shaking my body, and caught a glimpse of a silhouette above me before I fell back down into pain.
"No, it's me. Elizabeth." the soft voice brought me back to the world of the living from wherever I had been driting. My chest felt like someone had been on it with a hammer, and my lungs were burning, but I could breathe somewhat normally now. When I opened my eyes fully, Elizabeth loomed over me, looking surprisingly distressed by my condition. I could feel sand – strange – against my hands, and the sun on my face was warm.
"Are you all right?" she asked, her hands gentle as she checked me over.
"Where am I?" I asked hoarsely. Hopefully she had a better answer than lying flat on my back in some sand. I would have looked myself, but I thought another minute staying horizontal would do me some good.
"Back in the land of the living," she replied, destroying any hope I'd had of a useful answer out of her. In fact, that answer was less useful and more obvious than the one I'd imagined. We would have to work on that.
"Here, let me." she said with a smile, grabbing my hand and pulling me up slowly to a seated position.
"I can do it myself, I'm fine." I said tiredly, but I didn't have the strength to resist. Now that I was more awake, I was uncomfortable with her hovering over me and trying to mother me. She didn't listen, and kept tugging on my hand, smiling in what I guess was supposed to be a kind way. It was irritating.
"You almost drowned, you know. You need to-" finally, I yanked my hand out of her grasp, almost knocking myself over in the process, and she fell silent.
"I said, I'm fine." I repeated shortly, trying to push myself all the way up and failing. "Just... just give me a minute." She pursed her lips, but finally looked away and didn't make any moves to help me. Good. She didn't need to think I was here to be her friend. That would only spell trouble.
We sat for a moment in silence, then something caught her attention and she looked away, her face lighting up like a streetlamp. "Do you hear that? ...it's music!" she said excitedly, as if this was a strange and new up in isolation with a giant bird for a friend did weird things to you, looked like. But sure enough, I could hear a lively tune floating through the air. It didn't sound too far away. Maybe if she ran off to hear to the music, it would give me time to get my feet under me. I waved at her and muttered something, and that was enough for her to jump to her feet, nearly vibrating with excitement.
"O-okay, I... I won't be long. I won't be long, Mr. DeWitt." in a flash, she was gone from sight, and I was left alone. Mr. DeWitt? Where had she picked that up?
Still unable to sit up, I collapsed back onto the sand with a grunt, and my vision swam again. I laid there for God knows how long, waiting for the spots in my eyes to clear, trying to piece together what had happened. Little by little, my vision got clearer; first I could see my arm, stretched out on the sand in front of me, and then the blurry shape of a couple a few dozen feet away. The skyline had broke, and then we were falling, and then... water? How could I have fallen into water? The air smelled damp and sharp, like salt. Could there be a beach in Columbia?
Finally, I was able to struggle upright, and then slowly, staggeringly, get to my feet. To my left, waves lapped the sandy shore just like a real ocean (or the closest I'd seen, which was New York and so likely didn't count), and to my left, men and women in bathing suits lounged on towels or stood and talked in the sunshine. It didn't look like the water extended very far, but nobody looked interested in swimming anyway. One side of the beach ended at a wall, probably to keep the sand in, and the rest was closed in by a building. I didn't see Elizabeth anywhere on the beach though, which now that I was a little more clear-headed, was worrying. I needed to track her down, so we could get the hell out of here. It was pretty damn likely Comstock was already looking for us, since we'd managed to destroy a giant monument bigger than the Statue of Liberty right in the middle of the city. Maybe someone had seen her go by.
"Hey, have you seen a young girl, white shirt, blue skirt, dark hair?" I asked a woman sitting on a beach towel not far from where I'd woken up. She tilted her head and fluttered her eyelashes, and goddammit, why had I not asked a man?
"No, but... I'm without an escort if you're looking to pass the time." she cooed, turning her chin into her shoulder coyly. Jesus. What was with the women in this town? I didn't even grace her with an answer, just stalked off to find someone else.
No one else on the beach had seen her pass by, or probably more likely weren't willing to tell me if they had. I left the sunbathers in their stupid-looking suits to look further. There was a short covered way that led to another, more populated beach, and off to the side, a boiler room that looked like it had something to do with how the fake ocean worked. One of the workers, absent from the room, had left his lunch pail sitting on the table near the door with the lid cracked; I opened it up and grabbed the sandwich on the top so I could stop the rumbling in my stomach while I searched. Tough luck, pal; if he ever got chased by a giant mechanical bird, fell off a flying island, and almost drowned, I'd repay the favor. Until then, I was going to savor every bit of his canned ham sandwich. I took note of a poster on the wall, advertising the 'First Lady's Airship' – maybe that was our ticket out of here, if we could find a way to it.
I didn't see Elizabeth anywhere on the other beach either, and I was beginning to get frustrated. The exit was closed, so I didn't think she'd left; the only other place to check was the pier that extended into the water, which if she wasn't there, was going to be a problem. I passed a couple saying something about separate but equal something-or-other and a couple of kids building sand castles and started up the pier, where I could see a few couples dancing. To my relief, Elizabeth was there, skipping in the middle to the laughter and applause of some others, looking like she was having the time of her life.
"Hey, miss..." I said, standing awkwardly to the side as she spun in a circle, her eyes passing over me as if I wasn't there. "Miss. Elizabeth." I tried again louder. She noticed me this time, and stopped with a wide smile, swaying a bit.
"Hello!" she replied, giggling. "Oh, this is wonderful, come dance with me, Mr. Dewitt-"
She held her hands out in invitation, but I shook my head firmly and motioned to the beach.
"I don't dance, come on, let's go." I said shortly, ignoring the crestfallen look on her face.
"But why? What could be better than this?" she stepped back and twirled again, and I really wasn't seeing the allure of tripping over my own feet in front of a bunch of strangers, but I chalked it up to her being sheltered and tried to think of another way to get her to come with me that wouldn't get me on her bad side. Attract more flies with honey than vinegar and all that. Over her shoulder, like a sign, I saw the First Lady's airship drifting through the sky, the Lady Comstock's Face large enough to be seen below on the side. It gave me an idea.
"Well, how about... Paris?" that got her attention immediately, and she stepped back in front of me and gave me a beseeching look.
"What, Paris? I-I don't understand, how could we get there?" she asked curiously, but the hook was in. It was pretty clear from all the stuff in her room that this girl was obsessed with Paris. And I'd been told to tell the girl whatever she wanted to hear, as long as she came along.
"It's where that airships going," I said, pointing to it behind her, "But if you wanna stay and dance, you can-" she shook her head quickly.
"No, no, come on, let's go! Let's go right now!" she grabbed me by the hand and tugged me off the pier as fast as she could. I followed in amusement, amazed at how excited she was by the idea of going to Paris. I hadn't felt like that since I was a kid.
No, that was a lie. Not since – but that wasn't important. Getting Elizabeth to New York, like that dame had asked, was.
We crossed the beach to where the exit was. The photo shoot it had been closed for before was gone, so we strolled right up the steps and through the turnstile into what looked like a gift shop. Elizabeth stopped without warning, and I almost ran into her.
"Father Comstock..." she said, staring at a poster display in the middle of the entryway. His face took up the entire poster; behind them, there was another dedicated to Lady Comstock, her dark hair piled up elegantly on top of her head. "I've read about him. They say he can see the future."
I rolled my eyes. What a load of shit. "Give a man a little power, and he falls in all kinds of love with himself." I snorted. She didn't glance at me.
"I don't like his look." she said softly, her eyes still on the poster. There was a strange tension in her body, as if something about Comstock really bothered her.
Nearby, something thudded, and I looked up to see what must have been the patron of the shop standing nearby, stocking shelves. "Do you dislike the look of the Prophet?" he sneered at the two of us. "Or his gaze?" the tone of his voice really rankled me. I took a step forward, ready to resolve our differences and maybe rearrange his face, when a slight tug on my sleeve stopped me. I looked back; Elizabeth was glancing at me pleadingly, every inch of her body in discomfort.
"...can we leave now?" she asked quietly. I looked back at the shopkeeper, who wrinkled his nose, then stalked off, Elizabeth right on my heels. We left the store without even looking around, though Elizabeth shot a few curious glances at some of the toys on sale. And I may have nipped a hand into the cash register while no one was looking. That son of a bitch deserved what was coming to him already, this was just a nudge in that direction.
Up a few flights of stairs, the building opened onto a boardwalk, filled with vendors and stalls. I was looking around for anything useful to take with me when Elizabeth darted off again.
"Mr. DeWitt! Over here!" she called from whatever she was looking at. I really wished she'd drop the 'Mr.' stuff. She was standing in front of two ginger-haired – and oh Christ, not this again.
"Which will it be, Miss? The cage?" female Lutece suggested, holding out a pillow with something on it for her to inspect.
"Or the bird?" male Lutece added. His sister shot him a scathing look.
"Or perhaps the cage? Nothing beats the cage." she said snidely, looking at her brother, and then me. I felt that there was something extra in her words, some sort of meaning that I wasn't smart enough to catch. But there was always something else going on with these two; some sort of game that I felt like I was just a pawn in, that they never gave me a clue to the real meaning of.
"Look at these, they're amazing! Which one do you like more, this one? Or, or this?" Elizabeth asked, turning and holding up two jewelry boxes with trinkets in them. They were both ovals made of some dark stone, ringed with elaborate gold braiding. One had the outline of a birdcage on it, the other a white bird. I stared at them for a moment, while Elizabeth waited impatiently, and something knotted in my gut. Were these two serious? Was this some kind of sick joke?
The bird or the cage. Elizabeth's lonely tower, or her bird-creature captor? And I was supposed to pick one of these for her to wear? This kind of underhandedness made my blood run cold. Clearly Elizabeth didn't have any idea, but she didn't know these two goons; I did. And I wasn't doing this. Not for them, not to her.
"Those are both really cheap looking." I said roughly. Elizabeth's face twisted in confusion, and she turned the boxes back to her to examine the pendants again.
"Really? I thought they were pretty..." she said, sounding crestfallen. I felt like a real card right now.
"Well, they look like shams to me. Give them back, we'll find you something better. Maybe in Paris. Isn't that where women always wish they could shop?" I said. Her shoulders fell, but she laid the two pendants back down on the pillows and turned away.
"Interesting." female Lutece said.
"Let us know if you change your mind."
"But it seems you already have."
"Indeed." the two strolled off as if completely unaffected by my refusal, and Elizabeth stormed away, clearly upset with me. She walked all the way up to the small wall that overlooked Columbia and stood there, arms crossed as she looked out over the city. Jesus. I didn't know what to do now. I was clearly in the doghouse.
I walked up behind her, reached out for her shoulder, then drew back, wondering what to say. She beat me to the punch.
"That was incredibly rude. You insulted their wares right to their face." she said clippedly without turning around. I sighed and edged up beside her.
"Look, I've run into those two a few times now. They're running some sort of game that you and I don't know anything about, and I didn't want you dragged into it." I said honestly. The rigid line of her back softened, and she turned to me with a look of surprise.
"Why, Mr. Dewitt, I didn't know you cared." she said with a slight upturned twist of the mouth. It was amazing how quickly her mood changed; she was like a child, in that whatever she was feeling, she felt it as deeply as possible. When she was angry, it radiated around her in every direction. But when she was in good humour, like it looked she was now, there was no way to tell she had ever been upset.
I didn't know what to say. I didn't care? I cared about getting her to New York. I did care? That definitely wasn't it. So I just said, "Don't call me that."
She didn't reply, but she was still smiling slightly as she looked back at the view. When someone behind me gasped, I glanced back to see a man staring out at where Monument Island floated, now visible in all it shattered glory. The clouds that had been covering up all the damage to Monument Island were dispersing, and now you could see the missing head and the cracks all over the Angel. Elizabeth had seen it too; it seemed to leech every semblance of good humor out of her as she watched the place she'd grown up crumble.
"Let's go." I said. She didn't argue, just followed me further down the boardwalk.
A/N:So just so everyone knows, I made a few changes to the prologuue to make it read a little better and more smoothly. It's not really anything important, if you don't feel like going back to read it. I'll probably do that with all the chapters from time to time. As always, pleeeeeaaase review! Let me know how you like the story, the dialogue, the portrayal of Booker and Elizabeth, etc. etc.
Sidenote: I completely missed the creepy gay guy that hits on you in Battleship Bay the first time around. I wasn't paying attention to him when he was talking, and then I was like 'Wait... what?'
See you next time!