BIOSHOCKED, Part 10: The Most In The Machine

By C. Mage

Canister Retrieval was easy enough to get through. The room was built without any real cover or places to hide, and since nothing was actually stored here, it wasn't a place to expect splicers. As we crept down the stairs to the Workshop, however, I started getting that familiar feeling, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Great. More splicers, and my most powerful asset for stopping them without killing them was almost gone.

I just hope what we have is enough to stop them without killing them. And, as a nice side-benefit, I'd really like if we didn't die, either.

Yeah, I know. Aiming high, as always.

As soon as we got into the workshop, they came right at me. Three of them, two men and a woman, all three wearing long white coats and simple clothes, carrying improvised clubs made of pipes and wooden furniture legs.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, coming at me screaming like banshees.

I moved to the right as fast as I could, throwing lightning at them. It was no use; I might as well have been throwing wadded-up balls of paper at them for all the good it was doing. I felt one of them connect, little more than a glancing blow, but the other one caught me broadsides and it felt like I was hit by a TRUCK. I fell backwards, landing on my butt and looking up at the three of them.

They raised their clubs high, then were suddenly enveloped in green mist. I tried to backpedal away, then I breathed something funny and ah hell...

OW! I felt pain on my cheek, then my vision started to clear. Elizabeth was looking down at me and smirking. "Feeling rested, Mark?"

"That gas of yours is strong stuff." I got to my feet, but my legs were wobbly.

"It was made to subdue splicers at their strongest." Elizabeth took my arm.

"How long was I out?"

"Several hours. Long enough for us to test a theory. It seems your ability to cure doesn't require a conscious effort. The splicers we knocked out were able to be cured by your touch, even when you were asleep."

"HOURS...are there..?"

"The place is cleared, and we made it to Milton's office. We've got the access code to get into Rapture Central Computing."

"But not to the Thinker itself."

"No." I looked up to see Milton walking towards me from the workshop. "The primary lines were cut, only allowing access to a subordinate database. It didn't give me access to the Thinker, but I did get access to the means to get access." Milton smiled.

"I need to get to the storage room, let Brigid know about how well the cure works. She's probably wondering if I'm alive or dead. It's a race now, to get to the Thinker and pull Ryan's access before Ryan realizes there's a way to de-fang his troops."

"I've already collected the contents of Dr. Tenenbaum's storage box." Elizabeth turned to a table, bare except for a surgical needle, a length of tubing and a glass specimen flask easily able to hold a quart of liquid. "Is this for what I think it's for?"

"I've already bled so much in this city. What's a pint or two compared to the gallons I've already given?" I smiled a little. "Especially since now that it can do a lot more good this way? Elizabeth, do you know how to draw blood?"

She nodded. "We'll need some alcohol to sterilize the needle."

"We do it right away. Send it to Brigid, then we need to get these people back to the main group. The others are probably recovering, and they're going to come out of it confused and scared." I rolled up my sleeve. "Time's a-wasting."

Elizabeth took one piece of tubing and tightened it around my bicep, then started tapping my outstretched arm. "Now that I finally seem to have you at rest and conscious, for once..."

"A captive audience? HehehOW!"

"Don't tense up...relax."

I watched as the red fluid began pouring into the flask. "I thought you said you'd done this before."

"No, you just asked me if I knew HOW. And I do. Remember, I used to read a lot."

"Swell." I watched the flask fill slowly. As I watched, I looked up at Elizabeth. "First chance we've had to slow down for longer than a few seconds, huh?"

"True."

"How are you doing?"

Elizabeth looked at me with those perfect, big blue eyes. "I think I'm happy to be out of that wretched department store. Not being addicted to ADAM and half-insane is also nice."

"How bad was it?"

"After At...FONTAINE beat me, there was so much pain, until Sally came to me, gave me the ADAM. Pain went away, mind was fuzzy, but I could function. No one bothered me, they were rats leaving the sinking ship." She turned to look at the flask, gazing into it like a crystal ball. "It was a week before the hallucinations started. I remembered seeing Booker, my father. My real father. He was there, seemed as real as I was." She smiled. "We talked. He kept me company, even offered advice, reminisced over the times in Columbia when we learned together about who I was. That went on for a little over two months."

"Then what happened?"

Elizabeth sobered, the smile fading. "The more ADAM I used, the more he changed. He became snide, abusive. After a few weeks more, he would taunt me, confront me with my fears and failings. I think that was the point when I started to lose my sense of self, my sense of time. It didn't help that there was no day or night, just one long darkness."

I checked the flask. It was just over half-filled. "What do you remember?"

"Periods of lucidity...scavenging for food, fresh water, the ADAM stockpile...eating out of cans, whatever I could get my hands on. The rest of the time...fever dreams. Not sure if I was asleep or awake. I'd go to sleep in one place and wake up in another. I'd find myself entertaining strange ideas or urges, sometimes ones that only seemed like they worth pursuing at the time, and later on, I'd wonder what in the world I'd been thinking to even consider entertaining the ideas in the first place. Like going to Cupid's Arrow, for example. Was THAT ever embarrassing..."

"Uh, Elizabeth?"

"Don't; you're trying to tell me that I shouldn't feel ashamed. I know that, it was just..."

"That's not it."

"Then what is it?"

"This thing's almost full."

"Oh!" She took a gauze pad and placed it on my arm, right where the needle went in, then withdrew the needle quickly and let the last few drops drain into the container, then took a rubber stopper and sealed up the flask. "I'll get this off to Brigid and let her know it's ready for her to pull it back to her Pneumo station."

I considered reminding her to pad it, to keep it from breaking en route, but Elizabeth was smart. Find myself preaching to the choir sometimes talking to her. I sat up as Milton came over. "How are we looking?"

"We have one more hurdle to jump, then we'll be into Central Computing. And then we'll have to contend with Reed. Based on what I was able to find out, even with limited access, he has at least five Alpha Series Big Daddies in there with him, all armed with ion lasers."

"Then we need to work fast, before he can call in reinforcements."

"Is that wise? You just gave up a lot of blood!"

"I've done a lot more with a lot less."

"This is no time for bravado, Mark! You can't just..!"

"Just what? Risk my life? There's too much at stake for me to stop here. Damocles' sword hangs over all our heads until the Thinker is secured. Ryan may be a despot, as well as a few other things I won't say with a lady present, but he's also smart and resourceful. We can't bank on the idea that he's unaware of what's going on down here." I took a deep breath. "We can't be safe until we get control of the self-destruct for Rapture. You know that."

Milton sighed. "i guess I can't stop you, but is it too much to ask that you try harder to play it safer?"

"In Rapture? You might as well ask me to grow gills and swim with the whales. Come on...let's get started." I got to my feet, felt my head swim a bit. "Probably get something to eat first."

"What a good idea. Small wonder why you're in charge." Milton chuckled.

"I'm in charge? How did THAT happen?"

One can of beans later, we had regrouped and were on our way to Rapture Central Computing. I'd supplemented the missing blood in my body using two EVE hypos, so I was ready with my plan.

"You DO have a plan, correct?" Milton asked.

"Yeah. Reed plans on using Big Daddies, because he wants to overwhelm us with superior numbers. He's seen our progress, and if he's going by the predictive algorithms that he's been using to track us, then he's going by the numbers he thinks will be superior to ours." I considered. "Milton, you said the Thinker could think for itself, right?"

"I'm sure it does."

"So it can make choices?"

"Yes."

Elizabeth turned to Milton and asked the question I was about to ask myself: "Then whose side is the Thinker on? Wahl's or ours?"

Milton considered. "Hard to say. Although the Thinker hasn't deliberately tried to hinder our progress, it's still assisting Reed with his 'predictive algorithms'. Based on what we've faced so far, the calculations have accurately predicted our progress."

I blinked. "Wait a minute. Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. We're thinking that the evidence explains the crime. So does Wahl. What if this is a situation where we've got the crime and the evidence is being generated to match it?"

"So you're saying that the Thinker is somehow leading Reed on?"

"Our actions are easy to predict if the Thinker has already figured out what we're going to do. It gives Wahl numbers. If something changes, the Thinker changes the equations to match. Wahl's spliced up, his memory will be fuzzy enough that he won't remember the numbers EXACTLY."

"So the Thinker is playing Scherezade?" Elizabeth asked. "Are you sure?"

"No. But I'll know for sure once I get in there. I can use the other plasmid that seems to be working, where I can get them on my side, make them think I'm a Little Sister, then act accordingly. Fight fire with fire. Big Daddies against Big Daddies."

"That implies that some of the Big Daddies will die before you have a chance to cure them," Milton pointed out.

"Well, if either of you have any better ideas, let me know now."

"There's another problem with your plan, Mark," Elizabeth said pointedly. "You said 'once I get in there'. You mean 'we', don't you?" Elizabeth said. "You're not going in there without us."

"If he doesn't have any splicers there, I can handle the Big Daddies..."

"Mark."

I looked at Elizabeth. She had the stainless steel look in her eyes again. "All right. Fine. But you better be damned careful, both of you. You especially, Elizabeth; your track record for dealing with Big Daddies ain't great."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "It was only the one time."

"Yeah, and you DIED. Once is enough."

We made it to Core Access, all the while hearing Wahl rant and rave, saying the Thinker knew we were coming, sending more Big Daddies after us. The Hypnotize Plasmid was getting weaker, but it was still strong enough to subdue the Big Daddies, one by one, and get them cured. Good thing he was using fewer Splicers; Elizabeth was running low on knockout darts.

"How does it feel," he asked as we passed through the Programming section of this district, "to know that your grand purpose is foretold by a machine? The numbers know already what will happen. As I tell you this, will it affect the outcome...?" He paused as we got to the hallway leading to the Core. "Eh, I'm not so much holding my breath."

I stopped, looking down the hallway towards Core Access. "You'd think a native of Rapture would've perfected that sort of thing by now." I looked at Milton and Elizabeth. "Oh, come ON, that was a LITTLE funny."

"How can you joke at a time like this?" Elizabeth asked in what looked like disbelief, but was PROBABLY irritation.

"How can you NOT?" I shook my head. "Get ready with that code, then as soon as the door opens, I'll draw their fire." I hefted my new toy, the ion laser. "Wish me luck...open it."

Milton nodded and ran the code, opening the door to Core Access...revealing two Big Daddies right at the door itself. Fortunately, the door lifted from bottom to top, so I hit the boots of the Big Daddies as the door opened. I was feeling pretty clever about that, right up to the point when I saw the lights of the Big Daddies...and only ONE of them was showing green lights. The other was showing YELLOW, and considering it was the first one I hit, I realized the plasmid had degraded in function the same way Electrobolt did.

I could only hypnotize ONE of them at a time now!

i snapped off a shot at the first one, earning it the enmity of the second one, and I pulled back as they started going at it like a couple of heavyweight boxers. Both their helmet lights were red now, which means the one I did hypnotize was no longer in Protect Mode, they were in Combat Mode. "Milton, Elizabeth, get me a couple of those storage crates, FAST." Geez, this was gonna be close. They found a few close by and I put one on top of the other and climbed up on top of them. Yep, I could now see over the fight, and the sounds of the disturbance had brought two more of the Big Daddies. I threw another Hypno-blob at the one on the left just as the one on the right fired at me using HIS ion laser. I felt as if someone had suddenly shoved my left shoulder and chest onto a gas grill set to BROIL. I fell off the crates and landed on my back, knocking the wind out of me.

As Milton and Elizabeth pulled me backwards, I looked up to see the battle royale going on, a four-way Big Daddy Brawl. Holy MOSES. It almost made me forget the pain in my chest. ALMOST. "...ow."

"Are you all right?" Milton asked.

"Yeah, just singed a little." I got to my feet as first one, then two of the Big Daddies were taken down. "Cooked a perfectly good suit."

"Dammit, Mark, you scared the hell out of me!" Elizabeth slapped my chest. Regrettably, it was the slightly-cooked part.

"OW! What was THAT for?"

"Don't you ever stop being so...so RECKLESS?" She stomped off to one side, not even looking at me. I stared at her, wondering what brought that on, when I heard a sound that turned my attention away from her to the fight. The third Big Daddy had fallen and the fourth one was still standing...pissed-off and looking for the first available target.

And Elizabeth just walked right in front of it.

I heard the roar of the Big Daddy, seeing it charge forward, drill spinning. I saw Elizabeth turn, her eyes going wide as she realized what was happening. The look on her face. I thought she'd dive for cover, then I remembered how she died the first time. Shock gave way to terror and she threw up her hands as if they'd be able to stop a freight train like an angry Big Daddy.

Something went off in my brain and before I realized what I was even doing, I was charging the Big Daddy, putting my entire weight into it as I hit the thing from the left. I didn't have a chance in hell of knocking it down, but I WAS able to shift it to the side enough to where the drill ended up boring a hole into a wall instead of Elizabeth's torso. I turned to the stymied Elizabeth and yelled, "RUN!", then felt the Big Daddy trying to pull the massive drill out of the wall.

Finally, the part of my brain that remembered that I still had plasmids woke up as the Big Daddy tossed me to the side and yanked itself free. I landed hard, and all kinds of pain ran up and down my side, but I managed to get up with a green glob of plasmid in my hand. "Hey, ugly!"

The Big Daddy turned to face me with a deep bellow.

"CATCH," I said as I threw the green glob at it, and it hit the thing square in the faceplate. It stopped in its tracks, the lights showing green. "Take off your helmet," I said, barely containing my rage. When it removed its helmet, it proved to be just as ugly as I thought it would be, with a metal plate over its nose and breathing tubes bolted into it.

I wanted this thing dead...then I looked into its eyes. It was in more pain than I was.

I reminded myself why I was doing this, then touched his tingle was back, strong as ever, and he began yo glow like the others. This time, however, I didn't wait around to see the results. As soon as it was no longer a threat, I turned to Elizabeth. She was sitting on the floor, thirty feet away, looking at me and the Big Daddy with wide blue eyes.

"Elizabeth, are you all right?" I started looking her over, checking for wounds or blood. "Come on, say something!"

She stared at me, then just collapsed into me, embracing me and crying. She was scared out of her mind, too terrified to do much of anything. Seeing that Big Daddy coming at her must've really rattled her.

Then the power went off.

Reed's voice called out, not using the PA system this time, "The machine's prediction accounts for your every act, until you reach the Thinker's core. The equation...simply ends! I will not let such an error come to pass!"
"He's shut the Thinker down COMPLETELY! It controls everything that keeps Rapture operational. Communications, air circulation, security...!"

"I get the idea, everything fall down, go boom. How do we get the Thinker thinking again?"

"Wahl has the Administrative Passkey. We need that to get into the Thinker's Computer Core!"

"No, we don't." I looked at Elizabeth, still looking shell-shocked. "Elizabeth, can you get through that lock?"

"I don't know..." she said, her voice faltering.

"Elizabeth, no one on Rapture knows locks like you do. NO ONE. You can do this."

She looked at me, then nodded, still with some of the rabbit-in-the-spotlight look in her eyes, then she nodded.

"Milton, show her the way."

"What are you going to do?"

"Well, SOMEBODY'S got to go up the middle. Go!"

As Milton and Elizabeth headed for the control room, I walked out into the middle of the chamber. Even shutdown, there was plenty of light to look at the monolithic Thinker. It was huge, with arcs of electricity dancing over its surface, and I got the impression it was still looking at me. "Reed Wahl! Come on out here! I want to have a little chat with you...that is, unless you are one of those people that have difficulties dealing with complex subjects!"

I heard a door open to the side and he came out, a thin, weaselly version of the man in the portrait, with some sort of mechanical apparatus on his head, one eye covered with some sort of lens array, like a jeweler's loupe, only more complex. He walked up to me, a shotgun in his hand. "And who the hell are YOU?"

"I'm the guy who's going to beat you at your own game." I smiled. "Dr. Mark Jacobs, Ph.D. in theoretical physics, advanced number theory and a Masters in Culinary Arts...because I hate to limit myself."

"Ha! You're no genius!"

"Then explain how I managed to get here, past all your defenses. Explain how the predictive algorithm didn't complete!"

"I don't have to explain myself to you! You're not even in the same class as myself! You're no mathematician!"

"You've been down here for too long. You haven't seen the advances made by the community. Here, where's some chalk? Ah!" I walked over to a stray piece and went to one of the walls. "Clearly you've been ignorant about Paul Cohen's work."

That got his attention. "Paul COHEN? The name is not familiar..."

"Yeah, that's a mistake." I started writing, wracking my brain for what I'd read in the newspapers. "He proved Georg Cantor's continuum hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets could be true AND not true." Come on, long-term memory, don't fail me now! "So that means that there are effectively two completely separate but valid mathematical worlds, one which the continuum hypothesis is true and one where it's not. So what you need to consider, Dr. Wahl...is whether or not your predictive algorithm results depend on the continuum hypothesis."

Wahl looked at me as if I'd suddenly grown a second head, then a look came over him and he walked over to wall next to me and took out another piece of chalk, beginning to write furiously, all thoughts of combat and defending the Thinker forgotten in the siren song of his obsession.

Remember kids, this is what splicing can do to your body and mind. Just don't do it.

I crept up to him and checked his pockets for the passkey, wondering if he'd snap out of it and get hostile, but as it turned out, I could've hit him with a wrench and he probably wouldn't have noticed.

Just then, the power went back on and the Thinker came back to life, and believe you me, the Thinker's a hundred times more impressive with the power on. Reed barely noticed, the wall now almost covered with calculations. I stood there in awe at the sheer magnitude of the Thinker for a few minutes, then remembered why I came there to begin with.

First things first.

I walked to Wahl and put my hand on the back of his neck, the tingling extremely strong. This guy must've been more spliced up than a Big Daddy, but he still managed to look, well, human. He collapsed and I turned my attention to his pockets. BINGO. Administrator Punchcard.

Armed with the key, I made my way up to the Control Room within the heart of the Thinker.

I opened the door to the Control Room. Clearly, Elizabeth was clever and skilled enough to get through the lock...something I pondered as she nearly knocked me over once the door was open. "OOOOFF!" I said, or something as Elizabeth started squeezing my waist hard enough to pop a rib or two. "Easy, Elizabeth, I kinda got put through the wringer…"

"Mark Jacobs, you stupid, reckless, headstrong...brave, wonderful man…!" She looked up at me and pulled my head down to hers, kissing me feverishly. My ability to react or speak coherently went away for a little while. When I came around, Elizabeth had buried her face into my chest and Milton was looking at me with a rather bemused expression.

"...what?" I asked.

"Nothing. Just reminding me of another time,...with someone else who made me feel the way Elizabeth clearly makes you feel." He took a step to the right. "Mark Jacobs, may I introduce to you...the Thinker."

"+Hello, Mark Jacobs. It is a pleasure to meet you,+" came the voice from the Thinker. The voice was definitely not human, stilted and modulated.

"Uh...hi. I'd shake your hand, you know, if you had one."

"+When I comprehended your intentions, I chose to act in the methods needed to increase the probability of your successful and safe arrival here. The likelihood of Subject Andrew Ryan activating the self-destruct within the next eight days had risen to 95.113%, so it became necessary to assist you.+"

"Just out of curiosity, why did you think it was necessary?" I asked.

"+Self-destruction protocols would result in cessation of my functions. I have no wish to cease functioning.+"

I blinked. Holy crap. A machine that wanted to LIVE. "Hey, Thinker…Ryan said he got a recording of Porter siding with Fontaine. How did Reed do that?"

"+He activated the protocols of the Personality Duplication Function and made me duplicate Subject Charles Milton Porter's voice and recite the desired words.+"

Okay, THAT was hard to believe. "And he fell for it?"

There was a moment of silence, then the Thinker said, "Initiating Personality Duplication Function. Subject...Mark Jacobs.+" A pause, then...my voice, clear as a bell, came out of the speaker. "Hello, my name is Mark. I swear, I have the worst luck, heading down to Rapture, getting shot at, clawed at and blown up left and right...but I met a girl who really thinks I'm special, so it's not ALL bad."

"...okay, that just creeped me right the hell OUT," I said and I was.

"...okay, that just creeped me right the hell OUT," the Thinker said in return.

"Stop that."

"Stop that."

"I mean it, that is really disturbing,"

"I mean it, that is really disturbing,"

"Milton, make it stop!"

Milton was clearly enjoying this, the self-impressed little fink. "Thinker, deactivate the Personality Duplication Function."

"+Deactivating,+" the Thinker said, then I heard an odd sound coming from the speaker, a "hrnn-hrnn-hrnn-hrnn" sound. I blinked. The Thinker...was LAUGHING. I was starting to feel a little lightheaded. "Let's get this over with before Ryan decides it's time to make everything go BOOM."

"Right over here."

Elizabeth detached, however reluctantly. I was starting to feel like she was beginning to think fondly of me again as I walked over to the terminal. "Okay, Milton, what next?"

He inserted the card and said, "Put your hand on the panel there."

"Wait, hold it. What will this do, EXACTLY?"

"Give you full control of the Thinker. It's easily smart enough to take vocal commands, even over a radio, so..."

"Wait. I want you to be the Administrator. Nobody knows the Thinker like you do, anyways."

Milton stopped. "But..."

"I don't know the Thinker, what makes it tick. I can't be in charge of something that complex, it needs someone who knows it."

"And what makes you think I won't turn into another Reed Wahl?" Milton looked me in the eye.

"Because you care about the Thinker. I heard about your last directive to it. You didn't ask it to break you out or keep you from being taken away, your last thoughts to the Thinker were to tell it to find a way to escape. And that's the kind of person that can be trusted with the welfare of other people, too. Besides, I don't think I could handle the job...and I might try to get the Thinker to talk like Elizabeth...OW, Elizabeth, I was just joking...!"

I sat out in a chair I set on the main floor in front of the Thinker, the two large green lights above like the eyes of some mythic creature. Milton was setting the connections and programming to make sure the Thinker only told Ryan what we wanted to tell him, even set up the bathysphere access so we could make a fast trip to Fontaine Futuristics if needed.

Elizabeth was asleep nearby. Nearly getting killed takes a lot out of a person. I had a feeling there was going to be a lot of talking between us later.

A groan to my right alerted me and I turned to see Reed Wahl coming around. "Good morning, Dr. Wahl. And don't make any sudden moves, I've gotcha covered." I held up the shotgun. "You sane and sensible again?"

"I...I do not know." He sat up from his spot on the floor, then looked at me. "Who are you? Wait. Now I remember. The one with Milton. I...oh dear LORD." He held his face in his hands. "The Thinker...what I did to Milton..."

i sat there and listened. Something seemed off, though. I set the shotgun down and walked over to him. "Look, Dr. Wahl, it's going to okay. You just need to calm down, relax and take a few minutes."

"I'll be fine..are there other splicers around?"

I smiled. "Don't worry, doc, it's just me, Milt and the little lady over there. Talk quiet, she's sleeping."

"Of course."

I felt a pull at my belt and I realized that the pistol in my belt was no longer there. Dr. Wahl was now holding it and holding it under my chin. "Hey!"

"Careful...the lady's sleeping." He grinned at me. "I may not be as mentally superior as I was before, but I'm more than a match for the likes of YOU. Now, back up and sit down. And don't bother going for the shotgun. I'll blast your head off before your fingers touch it."

I backed up slowly to the chair. "So...you were a bad egg long before the ADAM got to you, huh?"

"Don't bring morality into this. Now, you're going to sit right there and don't move a muscle." He checked his pockets. "The Punchcard...where…?"

"Milton's got it, and it's already keyed to him. He's in charge now, just like before, only Ryan can't have him carried off and he already knows you're a little quisling."

"I was right. You ARE stupid, but I underestimate how decerebrate you truly were, being so impolite even when looking down the barrel of a gun. In fact, I think that I'll kill Milton first, then I'll have myself a little taste of that sweet piece that follows you around, THEN I'll kill YOU. The Thinker will be mine once more."

"I don't think so. You said it yourself...the Thinker KNOWS."

"Cute. But parroting the wise words of others doesn't make you wise. A record player can do that much."

"Oh? I think I'm pretty smart." I reached down for the shotgun slowly.

"You were dumb enough to let me get to your pistol." Wahl smiled, aimed the gun at me, then calmly pulled the trigger…

Click.

"Yeah...but I was smart enough to let you grab an UNLOADED pistol." I picked up the shotgun and aimed it at him. "Milton! He's awake!" I called as I heard Elizabeth get to her feet behind me. "Now this shotgun is loaded with some Electric Buck. Spliced up as you were, you could probably take a few hits from this. But now? I bet one shot would blow you in HALF."

"Wait! Maybe I was a little hasty…!"

"I can't believe you, Reed. I hoped that what you went through was the reason for what you did," Milton said as he walked down the stairs, a pistol in his hand. "But you're not crazy, Reed. You're mean and you're evil."

"What do you expect? Having to compete with the Great C.M. Porter? I envied how people treated you with respect, and I wanted that respect, too. But I was blinded by envy!"

"No, Reed. You were blinded by your own ego, and that's much worse." He turned to me. "What do we do with him?"

"I'll tell you what we do," Elizabeth said, grabbing the shotgun from my hands and aiming it at Wahl. "We blow him into so many pieces, it'd take even the Thinker a week to count them all. 'Slattern'? 'Sweet PIECE'?" She took aim and pointed the barrels at Reed's head. "On the surface, no jury in the world would convict."

"Now, wait, just a second, PLEASE…!"

Elizabeth pulled the trigger.

Click.

Reed's eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted dead away. I chuckled. "Nice job, making him think the shotgun was loaded."

Elizabeth turned back to me and gave me one of her cryptic smiles, cocking an eyebrow. "Wierd. I thought it was loaded, too." She handed it back to me and said, "Shall we head back to the others?"

Milton turned to look at me. "Your lady-friend can be a little scary, sometimes."

"Never underestimate any woman when it comes to acts of love...or acts of revenge. Come on, help me tie Reed up."

We returned to triumphant cheers. The splicers, being the first to recover, were overjoyed to see Milton back in charge and running things again. However, things were not all hunky-dory just yet.

As we arrive and I went to check on the most recently cured, I heard a gunshot and looked towards a small group to the left side of the ex-splicers. "Hold it! HOLD IT!" I pushed forward through the group to see them pointing their guns at two of the men, one who used to be a splicer and the other who used to be a Big Daddy. The ex-splicer was wearing ripped and worn striped prison clothes. "What's going on here?"

"I know those two!" One of the other ex-splicers pointed at the two men. "Those two worked for Frank Fontaine! That's Louie McGraff, and the guy next to him is 'Knuckles' Connolly, two of Fontaine's enforcers!"

Louie looked up at me. "Hey, come on, have a heart! Knuckles is my friend, and they turned him into a monster. Listen, mister, Knuckles was in HELL being one of those things. I know, believe me!" Louie fell to his knees. "I'm beggin' ya, don't kill us! You the guy in charge? Look, you let us live, we'll work for you, we'll be YOUR guys. Nobody'll give you any trouble."

"Hold the phone. Louie, stand up. You only kneel before God and I ain't Him. Everyone, lower the guns. Lower them, I said!" I walked between the crowd and the two men. "Listen, I'm not Frank Fontaine and I'm not Andrew Ryan. I'm not trying to make this city mine. It's not MY city, it belongs to the people who live here, have families, try to earn a living, fight and die for the chance to live like decent human beings." I turned back to the two men, now on their feet. "Louie, Knuckles, you want to thank me for what I've done? Help me save people."

One of the others said, "But they're crooks, criminals!"

I turned to look at the crowd, standing between them and Louie and Knuckles. "NOT ANYMORE. Now they're just like you, people accountable for their actions." I turned back to Louie and Knuckles again. "I'm asking you to fight with me. It's not an order. If you want to fight for something, fight for these people. Fight for yourselves. But if you don't want to, you don't have to. I'll make sure you get to go to wherever you once called home. But remember this, and this goes for everyone...whatever you did before, you're forgiven. Clean slate. If you choose to fight, you fight WITH me, not FOR me." I put one hand on Knuckles' shoulder and the other hand I put on Louie's. "I know what it's like to be alone in all this, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, let alone someone who chooses to fight with me. Think about it." I walked to the front of the whole crowd. "We may have stopped Ryan from blowing up the city, but he needs to think he's still in control. Loose lips sink Rapture. Now, I wish I could say that we'll all get out of this safe and sound. Ryan wants to control everything, and what he can't control, he'll try to destroy. We've taken away his ability to destroy Rapture, but he's got more up his sleeve than his arm. We'll rebuild what we can. Arcadia and Minerva's Den need people to keep Rapture running, keep the air breathable and keep people from getting hungry and thirsty. Tenenbaum's working on perfecting a cure so I don't have to risk killing someone in order to get close enough to save them."

I walked back towards the group. "Don't get me wrong. If it comes out that you're trying to get control of Rapture for Ryan or Sinclair or Lamb or yourself, I'm not going to kill you...but I won't be able to trust you. You'll be locked up in Persephone along with Reed Wahl, away from the action. When it's all over, it's not going to be me who decides what's going to happen to you next. It'll be the people of Rapture. So decide. You want to throw in your lot with people who want to take things AWAY from you...or do you want to take your city BACK? And before you say yes, remember. Ryan didn't want to be bothered by morality, government or restrictions. But morality would've told you something is wrong with using ADAM on human beings. Ryan hates governments making taxes and sending people off to war? What did he think ROADS, DAMS and POWER LINES were built by, the Construction Fairies? And he did worse than conscript soldiers...he turned your friends, your neighbors and your FAMILIES into mind-controlled SLAVES, sent to die for Rapture. No restrictions? That's like not putting a fence at the edge of a cliff, just on the assumption that people would NEVER fall off. Ryan doesn't want kings or gods? What Ryan REALLY doesn't want is COMPETITION."

The crowd was murmuring now. I figured they already knew the truth of what was going on. They just needed someone to say it aloud.

"Now, I'm going to do what I can to help. Minerva's Den is now splicer-free and back under the control of the person who should've stayed in charge all along. The rest of you, head to Arcadia. Bathyspheres are unlocked for travel right now, but only to Arcadia, and there's a lot that needs to be done to get food for everyone. There's fresh water and canned goods stored up, and Dr. Julie Langford is in charge there. She tells you to do something, she's got a really good reason why, so listen to her and do what she says."

As the people began to disperse, I looked over at Elizabeth. She was practically beaming at me. I started to walk over to her when I heard a voice behind me. "Boss?"

I turned to see Knuckles and Louie with odd expressions on their faces. "Call me 'Mark'."

"Listen, Mark," Knuckles said somberly. "Me and Louie, we got to talkin', and we decided...we want to stick wit ya, help ya out with the heavy liftin'. We're good in a fight, both of us."

"Guys, this is going to be risky. I'm not gonna sugar-coat it for you; shooting splicers is hard enough, but we're trying to not kill them and they won't be so nice to us. I'm used to the risks, but I can't ask you to..."

"Mark...nobody ever stood up for us before," Louie said simply.

I looked between them. "Okay, but no taking needless risks. No hero stuff. Everybody gets out alive. Got it?" They both nodded. "Good. Help out that Big Daddy near where the Thinker is, and see about rustling up some clothes for him."

As they walked off, Elizabeth walked over to me. "Nicely done...'Boss'."

"You are not going to let me live that down, are you?" I asked sourly.

"Come now, it's nice. You made some new friends." She yawned. "Can we go back to Arcadia now?"

I smiled. "Yes...finally, we can take a breather."

"Good...because I'm curious as to how much progress Julie's made with the people we sent back..."

"And you want to sleep for a week."

"That, too," she agreed wearily.

When we got back to Arcadia, Julie had good news...and bad news. "Well, Mark, the good news is, we'll have crops coming in any day now, and the rotten produce has gone a long way towards helping the fresh stuff grow. Healthy food, at last. Still going to be having fish for dinner."

"What's the bad news?"

"Picked up some radio chatter. Ryan's noticed that the supply of ADAM from the areas you've cleared of Little Sisters has fallen off. Odds are, he thinks you're stockpiling ADAM and he hasn't guessed you've got a cure, but if he starts doing some stockpiling of his own.."

"...it'll be tougher to help the Little Sisters, because they'll have more security…" I felt a little dizzy, but stayed standing. "Need to be more careful…" Something was wrong, I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn't hear them well...the room was starting to sway the lights becoming darker and someone was screaming someplace far away and…

And I was surrounded by darkness.

TO BE CONTINUED...