Disclaimer: You all know the drill (unintended pun, I swear); I own nothing but my own characters, story, etc. Let's see, well first off I hope everybody had a nice Easter and such. When we left off, Delta had just delivered Stanley, Grace, and Grace's mountain of luggage to Dr. Tenenbaum, who promised to create a drug that would keep him alive, even without Eleanor around. Meanwhile, the Feds have been snooping around the warehouse Eleanor's been hiding in, and Jack plans on blowing it sky high to cover up their tracks. What happens next? Read on.
The massive metal man stepped back to inspect his handiwork. The handful of holes and breaches in the walls of the station had first been plugged up with telekinetically thrown debris and then sealed off with the assistance of the Rivet Gun and some scraps of metal that had been scattered throughout the station. A crude but effective welding job with Inferno then finished the job, leaving the elevator as the only remaining entry point into the station. With hacking skills honed throughout his pilgrimage to find Eleanor, it had been a simple matter to then break into the elevator's control panel and lock the car in place at the top level, blocking off any and all access to Spider Splicers attempting to break in via a climb up the elevator shaft. There had been a lone Splicer roaming the halls with a rusty length of pipe, but a shotgun blast to the face had quickly put an end to that threat. Before he locked down the elevator, Delta gathered up the bodies strewn about the station and cast them into the shaft's empty darkness below. It wouldn't do to keep corpses in their temporary place of residence.
With a final grunt of satisfaction, Delta lumbered back to the ticket booth. He raised a gloved finger to press the shutter button, only to stumble and fall against the window with a ringing crash of metal against metal as a massive wave of pain racked his body. He slid down to his knees, one hand resting on the counter of the ticket window, the other bracing him up against the concrete floor as he groaned in agony. The edges of his vision flooded with tinges of red and pink, then darkened as his eyesight began to fade. His breathing was ragged and erratic. Over the deathly rasps of his labored breath, he heard the door of the ticket booth swing open, and the patter of shoes on ceramic tiles as a pair of feet rushed up to him.
"Herr Delta!" Tenenbaum's voice was laced with panic. "Hold on, this will help."
A pale, weathered hand entered his obscured field of vision, clutching a large hypodermic needle filled with some sort of glowing pink fluid. The gleaming syringe then disappeared from sight and plunged into the IV port mounted onto his armored chest plate. He could hear the strange squelching noise that he had come to associate with EVE hypos. Then there was a slight tingling sensation, starting from his chest, before it spread throughout his extremities, leaving a pleasant numbness where there had once been agony. Moments later, the numbness faded away, taking the pain and muddled vision along with it. He shakily rose to his feet before turning to face the doctor.
There was a mask of relief on Tenenbaum's face. "Ah, good. It has worked. I have injected a solution containing a replicate of Eleanor's pheromone signatures into your blood stream. It will filter through your body's internal systems and keep you from slipping into a coma . . . for a few hours at least."
Delta grunted his thanks as he experimentally balled his hands into fists.
Tenenbaum turned and surveyed the newly-tidied space around them. "You do good work Herr Delta," she said kindly, nodding in approval before turning back to face him. "I watched you work over the camera, we will all sleep much safer tonight, or whatever passes for night in this nightmare." She gave a mirthless laugh and a tired half-smile.
Unsurprisingly, Delta did not join in. The doctor's face then darkened once more. "You have saved many of my little ones, but I am afraid that a few more yet remain. I have been able to hack into Lamb's security network. By my count in the camera feeds, there are still ten Little Ones left in Rapture."
The metal man gave a groan of frustration.
Tenenbaum took note, but continued on. "Do not fear, I have a plan for them. You see, Lamb's Sisters, be they Big or Little, all report to the loading docks of Fontaine Futuristics to deliver their harvested ADAM. The loading docks are a separate structure from the laboratories, and should have remained intact. If you lie in wait there, it would be a simple matter to eliminate their protectors."
Delta sighed and nodded. He did not relish the prospect of fighting ten Big Daddies, and possibly some Big Sisters, in a row. He abruptly felt a tug on one of his gauntleted hands. Looking over, he found himself staring down at one of the girls he'd saved, more specifically, the last girl he had rescued, Cindy Meltzer. The girl's blond hair was unmistakable. A small yet mournful smile graced her features. Her old torn rags had been replaced with a clean dress, no doubt from the collection of Eleanor's old clothing Grace had brought with her, and her hair had been properly combed out.
A meek, tentative "Thank you . . . Daddy," escaped her lips before she rushed back behind the protection of Tenenbaum's skirts.
The hollow man sighed once more, but he had now been reminded of the purpose behind the danger. With heavy footfalls he trundled back to the waiting train. He couldn't help but hope and pray that the station at Fontaine Futuristics was still in one piece.
* * *
Jack silently thanked God, the Gods, or whatever spirit ruling the heavens that he had decided to bring along the pickup. The revelations in Rapture hadn't exactly left him with any amount of great faith in religion, but some instances just called for thanks to a higher power. Ten whimpering little girls currently sat in the back of the truck, alongside two boxes filled with selected items from the bathysphere. All of them were huddled beneath a large tarp. The truck hummed and shook gently from the idling engine. Jack sat in the driver's seat, tapping the wheel nervously.
Not far from the truck was a nondescript black van, the keys to which Jack had found in one of the pockets of the downed agents. The FBI men would eventually awaken inside their vehicle, missing nothing save for a slip of paper he'd found in one of their wallets. Jack had found his license plate number hastily scribbled on it. He couldn't afford to have the government track him down, not after having stayed hidden for so long.
All that was left was for Eleanor to make the final preparations and teleport out of there before the whole place came crashing down.
* * *
Eleanor stood in her suit, helmet and all, within the cockpit of the bathysphere. Within the submersible's engine, a select few lines had been severed and several nuts and bolts had been loosened, which Jack assured her would allow the whole machine to go up like a fireworks display when flame was applied to the fuel. She was just going through one final sweep when another chill, just like the one earlier, snaked its way through her body, shaking her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. She paused for a moment, breathing suddenly labored, before shaking it off and continuing.
There was a small light on one of the dashboards, flickering away. Curious, she stepped towards it. The console appeared to have suffered significant damage from the flooding, but was still operable. A faded, water-stained label atop the light's accompanying button proclaimed it as an "Exterior Security Camera Feed". The girl swallowed hard, her pulse quickening. Finger shaking, she pressed the button. There was a slight click as the cassette popped out of its slot. She knew what was on the tape. Cameras lined the outer deck of the craft, and the space where Father had fallen was no exception. She held the cassette in a trembling hand. It held the last moments of her mother and the man she had called Father. She began to lapse into a panic before the rational side of her mind took over.
Got to stay focused, she thought to herself, tucking the cassette away for later use. There will be a time for that, but not now.
Taking a moment to get a hold of her nerves, she continued on with her sweep. Every bit of evidence linking back to Rapture had been loaded in here, as close to the engine block, the epicenter of the coming explosion, as possible. Jack had moved most of it while she had been outside coaxing the girls into the bed of the truck, which explained the presence of a particular item she now saw sitting atop the pile.
Lying slumped over amidst waterlogged notebooks and boxes of supplies was a ragdoll, a metal coil tipping one of its arms. It was the doll of Father which she'd lovingly pieced together so long ago, kept close by first her, then the new Little Sisters. Events from a decade ago flashed through her mind. She felt a tear silently snake down the side of her face. The little ragdoll seemed so out of place, so incongruous with the other items, each and every other object some terrible secret or harbinger of Andrew Ryan's shattered dream. With the same uncertain hands with which she had held the tape, Eleanor gently picked up the doll and tucked it into the suit with the cassette.
She turned and looked over the rest of the items. Jack had taken a box of the most legible notes and records that had remained; the ones that could show the way back to Rapture, as well as the chest filled with the plasmids and hypos of ADAM and EVE. Those he wanted to destroy personally. She sighed. Here inside this undersea craft, and truly the vehicle itself as well, were the last traces of Rapture, the last remnants of her childhood, the only home she had ever known, hellish though it may have been. Some part of her, deep down, wanted to leave it as it was, a ghastly museum to a nightmare beneath and beyond the sea, but the rest of the young woman's heart won out.
She stepped slowly over to the small weapons locker Sinclair had kept aboard before fishing about within. Her hand wrapped itself around the form of a grenade and drew it out. A few steps brought her to the engine hatch, almost buried beneath a mound of Rapturian detritus. With a flick of her wrist, the hatch snapped open, revealing the shadowy depths of the bathysphere's recently sabotaged inner workings.
Eleanor stood on the precipice of the dark hole, grenade in one hand, her breath shaky and hesitant. Finally, mustering her will, she pulled the pin. She then let the explosive drop before evaporating into a cloud of purple mist.
* * *
There was a hissing pop, and the young woman materialized in the bed of the idling truck. Her gaze instantly turned to the warehouse, and a few seconds later there was a tremendous, resounding boom and a great whoosh of rushing air before tongues of flame shot forth from the flimsy old roof of the warehouse building. Jack had been right about the bathysphere's fuel. Even over the explosion, she could hear whimpers coming from beneath the tarp. She poked her head underneath the canvas for a quick, calming word of reassurance before pounding atop the roof of the cab with a gloved hand as a sign for Jack to begin driving. The truck revved forward, and the Big Sister dove beneath the tarp to join her fellow Sisters.
* * *
The old Atlantic Express train rumbled along the tracks, destined for Fontaine Futuristics. Delta stood at the controls, peering out the window as the scenery passed by. The flora and fauna of the Atlantic had been given ten long years unfettered by humanity to do as they pleased to Rapture's decayed remains, and they had taken full advantage of it.
Massive strands of pale kelp, hunks of multicolored coral, and ghostly wads of algae all littered the corpse of Rapture. Schools of fish, sharks, and jellyfish all drifted by as the train pushed onwards. Flooded buildings and districts, forever-lost fragments of Ryan's dystopian delusion, passed through the Big Daddy's field of vision as well. Delta sighed heavily and returned his gaze forward.
The silhouette of Fontaine's broken compound was fast approaching. Checking over his equipment, the metal man found them to be in a satisfactory condition and pulled on the brakes as the train skidded into the station. The doors opened with their familiar hiss, and Delta stepped out into the foyer of his birthplace. The whole experience was surreal. The main hallway the station led into held corpses he had made mere hours ago, and outside the glass, a massive chunk of the laboratory complex was simply gone. The metal man paused to take it all in.
The train station was connected to the rest of the facility by a series of glass walkways. Most were now flooded, or just outright destroyed. The sole exception was the pathway labeled in tarnished metal lettering, "Loading Docks". It was opposite to the doorway through which he had ventured into the offices and labs. Its watertight door was intact, and the walkway was visibly whole. Delta stepped towards the door as it whirred and heaved itself open automatically. He began to stomp his way down the translucent hall; his weighted boots making the shudder with every step. The haunting, echoing melody of a Little Sister's voice met his ears. Delta rumbled in anticipation and brought up his drill. He had a lot of work to do.
End Chapter. Please keep up reviews and comments. Once again, many thanks to Markal for beta-ing this for me. Feedback is awesome.
