Chapter 7

Fort Frolic

In many ways, Jack's sorrow for Rapture was growing, a stiffling tension was growing in his chest the further he walked. Despite the relentless attempts to kill him whilst he had been there, Jack had always remembered Fort Frolic was quite the beautiful venue, and had wished he'd been able to visit in its heyday - what fun there would surely have been to have had! But as with many of the tunnels and corridors he'd already walked, Fort Frolic was waist deep in freezing water, and all of it's overt neon signs had gone out. The sound of running water, the bold stone architecture and dim light made the chasm feel more like a cave - in fact his entire journey into Rapture this time had felt more as though he was cave-diving through a network of submerged chambers, than visiting a once great city.

The leak overhead, the one that had been there even before his first unfortunate visit to Fort Frolic, still rained down from the crack in the glass canopy and onto the central staircase that fed up to Fleet Hall. At the top, lay the corpse of a Big Daddy - at least the diving suit of one - he couldn't tell how much of the its biological remains still lay that rusting shell. After a decade back topside living in relative comfort, and a daily routine working in a bank that rarely stretched his physical boundaries beyond lifting a deposit box, Jack couldn't fathom how he had come to battle those giant creatures, and won! He guessed adrenaline would account for it - mixed clumsily with perhaps a little too much ADAM - and of course, he couldn't stand by and leave the little girls how he'd found them...

And there it was of course - his reason for coming back. When he'd escaped all those years ago, and take those four little sisters away with him - he'd known he'd left many more behind, but had taken some measure of comfort in knowing Dr Tenenbaum had been there to watch out for them. At least, that had been how he'd managed to get to sleep every night.

As his eyes glazed over and he remembered, he waded out of the water and climbed the stairs, that creaked and groaned under the first weight they'd had to support in quite a while.

He'd nearly screamed out of shock that summers morning when he had opened the door to Dr Brigid Tenenbaum. How different she had looked in a clean, fresh louse and skirt, with her silver hair neatly swept back with a large bronze clip. He'd never found out who the distant, coloured man had been waiting for her out in her car, with the dark glasses and what looked like strange mutilations - maybe burns over his face - but he'd seemed particularly wary of Jack and protective of Tenenbaum. She had to wave him down and offer a nod of assurance before leaving his sight and accepting Jack's invitation into his modest home.

Jack froze suddenly at the top of the stairs, and quickly slid behind one of the archway pillars just outside Fleet Hall. He'd heard a wet, sloppy trudge somewhere up ahead - footsteps. He'd heard faint whispers and voices already, from distant rooms and down long corridors, but he was yet to come across anyone face to face, and the possibility of it now already had his heart racing. He pulled the pistol from his pocket and held it up on guard, ready.

What came from around that corner however, wasn't anything Jack had seen before. In the shadows art first it appeared a monster - tall, lanky and awkward, it's every movement a mechanical jolt. It was limping and leaning bent to the left, and was dragging something. The closer it grew, Jack could hear a distinct clank of metal with each of those sodden footsteps.

"She left us... left us alone..." a weak, whimpering voice came from the dark creature, female, young and pitiful. It staggered into the light, and Jack gasped in horror at the teenage girl, encased in a suit of dark fabric and a cage-like structure, that appeared to be fixed to all her main joints. Only her head was exposed, a pale, gaunt face that peered up and over the ring where a helmet had once fitted. Her eyes were sunken and tired, and her hair oily, flat and stuck to her sweating forehead. She looked straight at Jack, but neither did she seem to see him at all. "She left us... They both..left us..."

Jack began to lower the gun, and looked up at the spider-like figure with pity. It was a Big Sister - just as Tenenbaum had described. But this one was hardly ferocious or violent - she seemed distraught, emotionally broken. She also bore several, serious wounds - burns to her arms and legs, and a gaping, oozing wound exposed a number of ribs. In her right hand, she clased the collar of the body she was dragging, a dead splicer. It had been an old man, his facial features morphed and churned beyond recognition, and both his right arm and leg almost twice the length of those on his left side. He was covered in blood, and still clung to a shotgun with his right hand. Jack figured out he had just missed a showdown between the two, and at some point before his demise the splicer had got off a shot at the Big Sister at close range.

Tenenbaum had told Jack all about these Big Sisters, but not how to communicate with one or even approach one without being killed. That was going to have be something he figured out soon if he was to complete the mission he had set himself. He watched on, grief stricken, as the poor girl staggered on down the stairs, passing through the cascade of sea water without a flinch, still mumbling to herself in distress. "Our mother...and Eleanor... gone! What did we do wrong..."

"Excuse me..." He coughed up reluctantly at last, tightening his grip on the pistol that he held behind his back. The Big Sister didn't respond.

"Excuse me, young lady... may I speak to you?" He gently called out, desperate to conceal the nervousness in his voice. She came to a slow stand still, and let go of the corpse that fell to the floor with a moist thud. She seemed to be listening, but didn't yet turn to face him.

Jack cleared his throat - he had her attention he assumed. He now had to navigate a route of communication that wouldn't set off a tantrum in the girl. He hadn't seen a Big Sister in action, but from what he'd been told, he didn't want to either.

"May I ask your name? Are you alright?" He held out his empty hand as a gentle, calming gesture, though she couldn't yet see it. The Big Sister twitched, and her back arched slightly, a number of her vertebrae made a gruesome cracking sound as it did. "My name?" She called out, sadness in her voice as she thought. "My name..." She repeated, gently turning her head and top of her body to catch sight of Jack standing behind her. Her eyes were more alive now, wide with awareness as she thought over his question. "Big Sister... That is my name, I am Big Sister..."

Jack nodded slowly, and took a step closer. "Big Sister... a Big Sister to the Little Sisters..." She continued, her frightened eyes turning away, staring into oblivion.

"You look after the Little Sisters very well I hear!" Jack assured her, hating how forced the compassion in his voice sounded, even to himself. She snapped her neck back around to face him. "You will not touch them! I won't let you go near the little ones!" She growled in a sudden rage.

Jack flipped his hand back and up to show surrender. "I don't want to touch the little ones, Big Sister..." He tried to spread a smile across his face, but his shaking made his face fight back.

"Keep away from them! Keep away!" She screamed in an explosion of emotion, and spread out her arms and legs wide, before leaping up over ten feet into the air. Jack screamed in shock at her sudden speed and agility, and fell back to the floor as she came sailing down through the air and landed like a pincer above him, holding him down. Her eyes burned with hatred, with anger and betrayal, her whole body shook with the rage. Her mouth opened wide, so far that her jaw seemed to entirely dislodge, and she screamed at such a pitch that Jack's ears stung and his head was pierced with pain. She lept again, up into the air, and before Jack could scramble to his knee's to follow her, she was gone.

His heart pounding in his chest and his breathing erratic, Jack took a moment to take in his first meeting with a Big Sister - perhaps he had known her before as a Little Sister, he couldn't tell.

"My God... what have you become...?" He mournfully whispered to the darkness.