October 13th, 1958
Audio Transcript – 'Why?'
[One month has passed. With Fontaine dead, I had hoped Andrew Ryan would recognize the destructiveness of the plasmid market and halt production. He would break up Fontaine Futuristics, lift the restrictions on smuggling, suspend capital punishment. Things would return to normal. If anything, Ryan's newfound autonomy has turned him brazen. He has nationalized Fontaine's investments, introduced a whole new line of plasmids. There are gene banks and ADAM dispensaries on every street corner. Moreover, Ryan hasn't freed the Little Sisters. Now the girls patrol the streets with their new armored escorts, drawing ADAM from the dead. Rapture is no longer a city; it's a feeding ground. Booker, could the Luteces be wrong? Why would Comstock be here? Why would anyone want to come to this place?]
"Why has the tram stopped?"
The security guard had the good grace to look apologetic. "I'm sorry, miss, no entrance past this point. Andrew Ryan's orders."
Elizabeth frowned. "I need to reach Mercury Suites."
"Unless I can see your residency pass, miss, we're not letting anyone back there at the moment. We're trying to cordon off Olympus Heights."
"I'm visiting someone… Brigid Tenenbaum. I don't live there myself."
"Tenenbaum? You mean that Kraut scientist who's gone missing?"
"Yes." Elizabeth was one of many to notice Tenenbaum's recent withdrawal from the public eye. Ryan had tried to cover it up, claiming she was working on her next great innovation for Ryan Industries. But Fontaine had been dead for a month, and there was no sign of Brigid Tenenbaum. Elizabeth had her suspicions, though she kept them to herself. "It's urgent that I speak with her."
"Even if I did let you in, I don't think you'd find her. No one's seen her since Fontaine went tits up, begging your pardon." The man furrowed his eyebrows. "Why're you so desperate to find her, anyhow?"
Because even with Fontaine gone and the economic competition over and done, the Little Sisters are still disappearing, Elizabeth thought to herself.
After Ryan Industries seized what remained of Fontaine's assets, the girls in the orphanages were left to fend for themselves. Those who weren't killed by rogue splicers or picked up by Cohen's trafficking ring –– now working independently from Sinclair Solutions –– were brought to Andrew Ryan's educational facilities. Elizabeth suspected the schools were fronts for Little Sister conversion centers. With plasmids and gene tonics still on the market, the citizens of Rapture needed their ADAM, and so Ryan needed the Little Sisters. But many of the girls had vanished, and with them, Brigid Tenenbaum herself. Elizabeth couldn't help but wonder if the former confederate of the late Frank Fontaine had had a sudden prick of conscience. And if Tenenbaum was working to free the Little Sisters, then perhaps Elizabeth had an ally in her campaign to close the books on Cohen's trafficking racket.
"Tenenbaum and I have a debt to settle," Elizabeth finally said.
"I still can't let you in, miss. I'm sorry, it's for your own safety."
Elizabeth stuck her head outside the tram. She could hear fires burning, and somewhere, a man shouting; his words were unintelligible under the cries of distant spectators. "What's going on out there?"
"That Fumblin' Dublin's stirring up trouble again." The young man harrumphed. "Down in Apollo Square… he's got quite a bit of a following now, so says the word on the street."
"Who?"
"You know… Atlas."
Elizabeth felt auric flashes behind her eyeballs, a sudden stabbing headache. "Atlas?"
"Yeah. When Ryan nationalized Fontaine Futuristics, that Irish bastard protested against him… in front of the whole damn citizenry. With Fontaine joining the great majority, Atlas's been using the old crook's poor houses to build up supporters against Ryan. Those hooligans have made Hestia Chambers in Apollo Square their headquarters, and every time Atlas so much as takes a shit we got to be out here making sure he ain't shitting on Ryan's effigy or something."
… I'm not a liberator… Liberators do not exist… these people will liberate themselves… faces within faces… a mask, a man… spirals…
Elizabeth blinked rapidly, trying to clear a sudden wave of nausea. "In Apollo Square?"
"Yeah."
"I'd like to see him, if you wouldn't mind." Elizabeth flashed her brightest smile. "Professional curiosity."
"I do mind, actually, miss. If Sullivan found out I was letting people past here, he'd have my badge."
Elizabeth took out a roll of Ryan dollars, the last of her allowance from Fontaine. "An exchange, my friend. I've been lead to believe that the business of Rapture is business."
"Don't go flashing that around!" he hissed, but he took the money anyway. "Just under those arches there. You can't miss it; just follow the shouting and the fires."
"Thank you," said Elizabeth, meaning it. She disembarked, and stepped through the bulkhead to Apollo Square.
The wounds of Ryan's war against the smugglers were still fresh. Off the main, the metro system trolley had been completely destroyed. The sea had begun to reclaim that corner of Rapture. The aluminum hull was dented, the windows cracked and leaking. Live wires dangled from the ceiling, their exposed insides flashing in the stagnant water. Elizabeth was careful to step around the puddles as she entered Apollo Square. Inside, the entire residential area was in ruins. Fires burned in rubbish tips and trashcans. Pictures of missing people adorned the walls. Elizabeth could smell the bloated, necrotic bodies, left to rot from the makeshift scaffolds in the square. It was barbarism at its most primitive and degenerate, thriving in one dark margin of utopia.
The top two floors of Fontaine's Home for the Poor in Hestia Chambers had been converted into a command center. Ryan security had erected barricades around the building. Many of them had guns trained on the destitute men and women trapped inside. On one high balcony was the man Elizabeth had heard shouting while she was aboard the tram in Olympus Heights…
And it was the same man from the back of the Fleet Hall. Elizabeth was sure of it.
… faces within faces…
He was tall, dark-haired, exceptionally handsome, dressed in the slacks and braces of the Rapture working class. His easy smile exuded charisma. When he began to speak, everyone paid attention, even Ryan's security detail.
"Andrew Ryan's playing us for saps!" he bellowed in his Dublin brogue, "If you go to the Rapture Council, you'll find those suits and ties, those dossers, those misrepresentatives of the masses claiming, with their fine words and pretty talk, that they have risen from the ranks to their places of eminence. And Ryan… that bastard'd live in your ear and sublet your eardrum! That's how they make their way! I am very proud that I cannot make that claim for myself!" The crowd roared their approval. "I'd be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise, it will be with the ranks!"
Elizabeth was impressed, even though his speech was anything but original. The words were a spliced patchwork of union rhetoric from any number of places, from the writings of Clarence Darrow to the campaign speeches of Eugene V. Debs. But it didn't matter what Atlas was saying; the passion he instilled in people made them believe every word. Andrew Ryan knew how to elucidate, but Atlas knew how to inspire.
"You've all had a taste of Andrew Ryan's promise of opportunity." Atlas gestured to the ruins of Apollo Square, barred his white, white teeth. "He's the one who built this place, and he's the one who's gonna run it into the ground. He's made a holy show of Rapture! Maybe he ain't quite the full shilling anymore." Elizabeth felt the security officers stiffen. "Maybe the power's got to him. Maybe he's just decided he don't like people. Whichever way you slice it, boyo, good men are dead and dying. It's time to either run the table or go home empty. Are we gonna stand for it?"
Elizabeth didn't hear the response under the shouting. Atlas' followers began to bang basin wrenches and pipes against corrugated sheets; the sound reverberated through the square like metallic thunder. Some people began to throw things at Ryan security: rocks and rubble, empty bullet casings. Atlas was stirring the crowd into a frenzy, and the security officers were growing restless.
"Alright!" bellowed a large man in uniform; Elizabeth recognized the Brooklyn accent of Security Chief Sullivan. "Alright, break it up, go home, go home, you know the rules, no public gatherings above four people. Come on, move it…"
Atlas sneered. He crowed from the balcony, "You can shut us out but you can't shut us up, boyo! Ryan's lot are awful wasters altogether, aren't they lads?"
"Keep your damn mouth shut, you fucking leprechaun!" screamed one of Sullivan's lieutenants. Atlas' people didn't like that very much. A couple of splicers in Hestia Chambers began to throw fireballs, dispersing the security officers.
Elizabeth elbowed her way through the crowd. With so much chaos, no one noticed her. She spotted a familiar face at the edge of Atlas' gang, hovering near the security perimeter.
"Samantha!" called Elizabeth. Samantha Kemp started at the mention of her name.
"I don't believe it," the young woman murmured, "that's you, ain't it, from the bathysphere station? Jesus, what the hell're you doing down here?"
"I could say the same." Then it occurred to Elizabeth. "Fontaine… you lost your job."
Samantha's face twisted in anger. She spat, "And more besides. After Fontaine was dead and buried, they killed my baby… Those fucking lunatics, Ryan's Houdini splicers, full of their fucking ADAM, came into Artemis Chambers looking for contraband and murdered my boy. I don't got anything left but the fight, and I'll see Ryan dangle if it's the last thing I do. Atlas is promising us something better. He says we don't got to live like slaves! We don't got to die like my boy died!"
Elizabeth's chest ached. "But Apollo Square… you can't stay here. Ryan is shutting down the bathyspheres and the trolleys, cordoning off Olympus Heights. You'll be trapped."
"You ain't in the know," Samantha smirked mirthlessly, "soon, Atlas'll be moving us to Fontaine's old department store… all sorts a' supplies and munitions left over from that bald bastard's time. We're blowing this fucking wasteland." Samantha began to move with Atlas' crowd, receding back into the poorhouse. She paused. "Come with us."
Elizabeth didn't move. "I can't. There's something I have to do, Samantha. I have business with Ryan."
"Hun, everyone's got their bone to pick with Andrew Ryan. Why don't you join us… we'll hold his head, and Atlas'll hold the knife."
"Because," Elizabeth looked up to the balcony, where Atlas stood, arms crossed, surveying the chaos; her words seemed to come from very far away, "I am owed more than this."
… or die with Atlas…
Samantha shrugged at the cryptic answer. "Suit yourself," then she gave Elizabeth a little wave, "maybe when we meet again, it'll be in a better Rapture, huh?"
Elizabeth returned the wave. But she knew she would never see Samantha Kemp again.
Ryan's security detail was regrouping from the splicer attacks. Some of them had brought chemical throwers and grenade launchers. Before Sullivan set the entire square on fire, Elizabeth retreated to the metro line adjacent to Hestia Chambers. The guards were only too happy to let her pass; they were eager to clear the square.
Elizabeth was the only one on the trolley when it began to trundle back to the bathysphere station. When she was sure she was alone, she smiled.
"Why are you so happy?"
Elizabeth turned to Rosalind Lutece, grinning. "I've just had an idea."
"Oh?" Robert Lutece lowered his newspaper; the headline read: Atlas' Parasites Driven from Point Prometheus. "Do tell."
"The department store."
"What about the department store?"
"What Samantha Kemp said… if Atlas is moving his followers to Fontaine's, then it stands to reason that the department store is appositely sequestered from the rest of Rapture, somewhere dark and dusty where Ryan won't think to look for them. It's been a month since the Council seized the building, and nothing has become of it. It's just sitting there."
"I assume you have a point, but what that point may be heretofore eludes me."
"Atlas and his gang aren't the only ones who need somewhere to lay low." Elizabeth made a beeline for the bathysphere. Once inside, she set the coordinates for Fort Frolic. "Fontaine's Department Store is huge; there are a hundred places to hide a large number of adults… or a large number of children, should the need arise."
"Ah. You believe the estimable Brigid Tenenbaum has taken up residence."
"If I can get into Fontaine's, if Tenenbaum and I pooled our resources, then we might be able to put a stop to Cohen's child trafficking ring, maybe the entire Little Sister conversion program!"
"That's provided Tenenbaum has, indeed, gone rogue, and is not simply holed up in her laboratory quietly minding her own business."
"As Andrew Ryan claims. Irregardless of your opinion of the man, he values his business associates."
"Now Atlas on the other hand…"
Elizabeth faced the Luteces. "What about him?"
"You tell us."
"There are Doors… but I can't see anything behind them. Just… darkness. Shadows."
"Hmm. Interesting man."
"Though there's little to like in him, one must admire the lilt in his brogue."
"I do commend this recent effort of yours to find the good in people, sister."
"Sadly, brother, it's all a lie."
"The effort?"
"The accent."
"I don't suppose there's much about the man that's authentic."
"He's authentically homicidal."
Elizabeth shook her head. "You're mistaken… Atlas is trying to help the people of Rapture, the same people Ryan and Fontaine abandoned to the wayside. Look at Samantha Kemp. She had nothing. Now, at least, she has a little hope."
Hopes, much like quantum superpositions, have a tendency to collapse.
"At any rate," the bathysphere docked; Elizabeth navigated the atrium towards the Fleet Hall, "Atlas is my way of reaching Brigid Tenenbaum. With her help, I can save those children. I just need to reach the department store."
"Miss Comstock…" Rosalind Lutece hesitated for a moment; both Elizabeth and Robert looked surprised: "When I met your father, he was little more than a preacher, but he believed in my work, and his influence bought the funds I needed. Much as Fontaine, and later Ryan, did for Tenenbaum and Suchong. And if my patron wanted to use Tears to play prophet, then that was his prerogative. But at some point, the man became incapable of distinguishing his performance from his person."
"At the risk of sounding redundant, Madame Lutece, I assume you have a point…?"
"When does porcelain turn to flesh? Masks, after a time, become difficult to remove."
Elizabeth laughed disparagingly. "I have been here for nearly three months. In that time, I have found absolutely zero evidence of Comstock having lived in this city! Yes, finding those girls for Fontaine started out as a front, but my time is much better spent affecting a change for positive good than running around on a wild goose chase!"
"Selfless of you," said Robert.
"But silly," countered Rosalind. "Consider: what phenomenon occurs when there is a straight-line configuration of celestial bodies in a gravitational system? When the moon blots out the sun?"
"Eclipses," answered Elizabeth. "Shadows."
Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine, and now Atlas… they were all masses in orbit around each other, aligned in perfect symmetry commensurate with the laws of gravity and time. When their paths intersected, there was darkness. Eclipse. If Elizabeth crossed any of them, if another celestial body was added to the gravitational system, then she would create a very large shadow indeed.
"I don't care," Elizabeth decided. Saying the words felt remarkably liberating. "Vengeance and mercy are superpositive forces, Madame Lutece. If we are all set on some inexorable trajectory through all the endless worlds, all the infinite possibilities, then how can there be a real difference between forgiveness and reprisal? What if, under everything, even under the skin of reality, it's simple regret that distinguishes one world from another?" Elizabeth touched the brooch at her neck. "I can still feel it, you know, killing him. I have killed him. I will kill him. I am killing him… there is not an hour that passes where I don't see him behind the Doors. See him dying. It's like a second shadow filling the space beside me. And I will live with that regret forever. But if I save just one life, one of these Little Sisters, then perhaps I can finally step through a Door where Booker DeWitt cannot follow me. Where I can be happy again."
Robert sighed. "Frank Fontaine is not a very pleasant man, but he is right on one account."
"In Rapture, the most important thing to oneself, is oneself," added Rosalind.
"We believe you understand that principle exceptionally well."
The words hurt. Elizabeth swallowed back a few choice rejoinders as she circled the atrium, mostly because she knew in her heart that Robert and Rosalind were right. And by the time she cared to see if they had followed her, the Luteces were already gone.
She didn't allow herself to dwell on them; she had much more prosaic things to worry about. Elizabeth knew that allying herself with Tenenbaum would jeopardize any influence she had with the community in Fort Frolic, not that it would constitute a great loss. Sander Cohen ruled that small, bright neverland, emblazoning the corridors in violent brushstrokes of red and white, muttering nonsense to his muse when he thought no one was listening. The maestro had lost his mind long before he spliced with his first plasmid.
Hector Rodriguez drank himself into nonsensicality in Sinclair Spirits. Silas Cobb sought solace in his Eve syringes, and Martin Finnegan exiled himself to the frozen tunnel between the atrium and Poseidon Plaza. Most of Cohen's disciples were lost causes. But there was one person Elizabeth didn't want to leave behind.
She found him on the stage of the Fleet Hall, sitting at the piano. He picked at a single key: middle C, over and over and over again, out of tune and without melody. In the silent theater, it sounded like someone chipping away at a block of stone. Elizabeth approached. She cleared her throat to be heard, but he did not register her presence.
"Kyle?" asked Elizabeth tentatively. There was something off about his posture… "Kyle, I have to talk to you about something…"
Kyle Fitzpatrick continued to pick at his middle C key. He kept his back turned to her.
"Kyle?" Elizabeth circled around the piano.
She had to choke down her scream.
Kyle Fitzpatrick's face had been torn open, his skin haphazardly stitched back together. Half of his skull was swathed in bandages. Pus had begun to seep through the dressing; flies orbited his head, landing in the suppuration. His lips had been pulled back over his necrotic gums. Someone had carved his mouth into a permanent sneer. His fingernails had been torn out, his cuticles sliced to the knuckle. His arms were burnt and blistered, and every movement elicited a whimper of pain.
One unblinking eye lolled in its socket; trachoma had turned the cornea opaque and chalky. The working eye darted around in terror. The pupil glowed choleraic yellow.
… see young Fitzpatrick here on the stage… take him as he is now… so I may remember him…
"Oh God…" Elizabeth tore the hem of her dress. She wrapped the tourniquet around Kyle's blind eye. "What…" her hands began to shake. "This wasn't supposed to… Who the hell did this to you?"
Fitzpatrick's mouth couldn't seem to form the words. His mouth twitched, his lips splitting and blood staining in his teeth.
"Steinman sculpts, but I merely provide the clay…"
Elizabeth rounded on Sander Cohen. He stood in the center aisle of the theater, his smile like a bloody crescent carved into his face. Elizabeth saw red. All rational thought faded behind the sound of her heartbeat in her ears. She felt Booker standing beside her; she saw him grabbing Comstock's head, cracking his skull across the basin…
"You… fucking… bastard…"
Elizabeth lunged at Cohen. With his spliced reflexes, he was much quicker. She swung at him, he caught her wrist, spun her around the aisle, as though dancing. Elizabeth tried to bite his hand.
"Oh, naughty."
Cohen twisted her arm behind her back; Elizabeth felt her shoulder pop. He held the other down to her side in a grip so tight his fingernails dug into her skin. Elizabeth struggled, but she didn't cry out.
"I warned you, little songbird," Cohen hissed: "fuck it up with Andrew, and there would be consequences."
Elizabeth tried to shake him off, and his nails dug deeper. "For me… not for Kyle. No one else… no one else…"
"Look at me, girl."
He forced her head around. She met his bright eyes… flickering between hazel and yellow.
"You are my biggest disappointment," he whispered against her cheek, "so puerile and derivative… but Fitzpatrick has shirked the veil of convention. He embodies the unconscious swathes of expression, captures beauty through vibrant screams of color. Is he not exquisite?"
Fitzpatrick dragged his mutilated fingers across the keyboard. A sob dripped from the broken remnants of his mouth.
Abruptly, Cohen let her go. Elizabeth's shoulder howled; her right hand hung limply at her side.
"Fontaine's Department Store, you say?" Cohen flashed his yellowing teeth. "If one deigns to talk to oneself one should do it in the privacy of one's own abode, hmm?"
"I will end you, Cohen," Elizabeth said haggardly. She felt a tug in her gut; it would be so easy to open a Door, unleash hell…
"Well, Elizabeth dear, your contract is not due for renewal until the end of December, so you have ample time to reconsider before threatening me again."
Elizabeth had a better idea. "I'm leaving, now… and I'm taking Fitzpatrick with me."
Sander Cohen's scream rattled the rafters, "YOU LEAVE ME NOW AND YOU WILL NEVER FIND THOSE MISSING GIRLS!"
"No…"
The tiny voice came from the broken man at the piano. Elizabeth elbowed past Cohen. She knelt beside Kyle on the stage, looked up into the sliced scraps of his face.
"… can't leave…" his words diffused into the air, "he… won't let me…"
Elizabeth stared hard at his one working eye: yellow, glowing. Despite his necrotic skin, Fitzpatrick smelled sickly sweet, like fruit. Elizabeth recognized the signs of hypnotic pheromone splicing. Fitzpatrick was entirely subject to Cohen's will.
"I won't leave here without you," promised Elizabeth.
"How delightful!" Cohen sounded elated. As he strode from the theater, he called back to her, "Make yourself presentable, little songbird! We have a performance tonight, and I simply cannot wait to see the look on Anna Culpepper's face…"
Elizabeth sat down on the stage, leant against the piano. Kyle Fitzpatrick played the single note, over and over again, until her heart began to beat in tune to the music. Like a metronome, demarcating the dying hours.
She hugged her knees. And she cried.
