Uh, wow. I swear, I did not mean for this massive wait between chapters. In my defense, I had to focus on my college studies, and it just so happens that I'm studying one of the hardest majors out there. That, and my betareader was having a very rough time in her life. Anyway, I hope that this new chapter was worth the wait. Feel free to leave a review or PM with your thoughts on this chapter in WonderShock, WOULD YOU KINDLY?
I believe that I will start putting that into every author's note in any BioShock fanfics I write. MWAHAHA!
Chapter 11: Rapture University
February 2, 1959
"Disgusting things, are they not?"
Looking down at the ADAM slug on the dissection tray, Alice had to agree with Tenenbaum; it was downright revolting. It was a brownish-black thing, about a foot in length, with two rows of bioluminescent spots running across its body from its thick head to the tapering tail. The spots were a sickly orange, the two large ones at the front resembling a pair of grotesque eyes. Along the edges of its mouth was a row of razor-sharp teeth, perfect for latching onto a host and injecting ADAM from the pouches behind its mouth into the unfortunate's bloodstream, forcing it to allow the slug to stay or suffer the consequences of ADAM withdrawal.
With its belly cut open right down the middle, revealing its nasty, slime-covered innards, the sickening-sweet smell of the green, unprocessed ADAM filling the air alongside the slug's flesh, Alice could now say that she knew of a creature that was foul on both the outside and the inside. The only thing worse than the smell of the freshly-killed slug and its ADAM that she could remember was the utter stench of the Red Queen's biomass. That smell would have cleansed Fort Frolic of all its iniquities, before taking over and forcing Ryan to quarantine the area.
"Certainly," Alice agreed. Taking a closer look and almost regretting it, she stood back up and glanced at Tenenbaum. "I saw a few of these slugs at an aquarium when I was readjusting to life after my time in Rutledge, and they weren't near this repulsive." She toyed absently with the spare scalpel that she had been ordered to hold, taking care to avoid slicing her fingers on the sharp end.
"Ach, that was because those slugs had no host," Tenenbaum replied, her face set in concentration as she deftly manipulated her dissection scalpel and rod through the slug's organs. "Those slugs turn white, and their spots bright red, all to attract host. They feed off bottom until they latch onto passing fish or shark. Then they turn into this disgusting thing."
"Not much of an improvement," Alice noted wryly, rocking back on her heels in boredom. She snorted as a thought came to mind. "Ironic, is it not? That for all of Ryan's speeches and manifestos against parasites, his city now depends upon one to get their daily fix of plasmids."
"I'm not one for irony," Tenenbaum said, her eyes still on her work, "but I can appreciate this instance of it." She pushed the slug's mouth open wider with her scalpel, running its edge along the teeth. "I almost classified the ADAM slug as symbiote, until I realized the damage caused to the host by removing the slug. In the case of the Little Sisters, the relationship is so close, removing the slug can kill the little girl." She shook her head. "What a monster I was, forcing such a thing on a child."
Alice agreed wholeheartedly, and let her silence on the matter speak. Instead, she asked, "Then how did you cure the little girls?" She glanced out the window of Tenenbaum's room/lab into the interior of her hideout, where the six cured Little Sisters were playing ring-around-the-rosie, giggling and singing the whole time. "They look very alive to me," she added as they all fell down.
"My process forces both the slug and the girl to reject each other, destroying her dependence on its ADAM, and its dependence on her nutrients," the German scientist explained, pointing towards a jar holding a yellow substance. One look at its thick consistency and nauseating, dull glow, and Alice knew she didn't want it anywhere near her.
"Unfortunately," Tenenbaum continued, "the process is very costly, drains both supplies and time to make single dosage for one little girl, which is why I now work on Little Sister Antidote Plasmid." Satisfied with her probing of the slug, Tenenbaum put down her tools, covered the slug with a cloth, and walked over to the sink to wash her hands, Alice right behind her.
"Once plasmid is ready, you will be able to cure the Little Sisters in mere seconds, with minimal to no cost to your EVE," Tenenbaum rattled on, her explanation going into autopilot. "You won't be able to get optimal amount of ADAM from slug, but I have stockpile from the Little Sisters that I cured, so don't worry when getting new plasmids."
"Make sure you store that ADAM somewhere the splicers can't smell it," Alice said, grimacing as she remembered her first encounters with the ADAM addicts. "They're like bloodhounds when it comes to the scent of ADAM," she added, giving the scalpel a quick swing before setting it down.
"Was first thing I did," Tenenbaum said, wiping her hands off on a threadbare and crusty towel. Setting it down, she picked up her tools and began to clean them. "That slug was my last one. I need more to continue my experiments, and you need to get them for me."
"Why are more slugs needed?" Alice asked, arching an eyebrow at the scientist. "And where would I obtain them?"
"I need the slugs to study the rejection process and adjust it for plasmid," Tenenbaum said, nearly slicing open her finger with the scalpel. She put it down with a glare and began scrubbing pieces of slug gut off of the rod. "The easiest place to get slugs would be Biology Department at Rapture University. I hear that some of students have created some equipment that you may find helpful. And speaking of new equipment…." Laying the rod down and giving her hands one final dry, Tenenbaum reached into a pocket and drew out a radio.
It was a service model one would find on a bathysphere. A shortwave radio, its range wasn't powerful enough to be picked up outside of Rapture, a true pity in her opinion. However, it would be sufficient for communicating across the breadth and width of the city. Taking it out of Tenenbaum's hand, Alice was surprised at how light the thick communications device was. Running a finger along the yellow speaker on its front, she gave it an appraising smile. Taking an easily accessible device and using it for inner-city communications; she had to admit Tenenbaum was certainly resourceful.
"Any chance you could get one or perhaps four for the Guardians?" she asked, a trace of a joke in the question.
Tenenbaum had been happy to learn that Alice was both the bearer of the A-gene, and also dedicated to protecting the Little Sisters. When she had learned of the Guardians, a group of well-armed people who had previous experience in combat (or so Aster hinted), she had been ecstatic. Of course, Alice hadn't told her about the "Man in the Moon" as instructed by the Guardians, which made sense in that they didn't want their primary source of intel found by Ryan. Until she found evidence of the man's true intentions, however, she was going to remain suspicious and cautious of him. She hadn't survived this long from pure luck after all.
"I am afraid that is the only one I can spare," Tenenbaum said, her eyes beset with regret and some exasperation. "But I can also give you this," she added, walking over to a safe and opening it with a well-practiced number pressing. Before Alice could get a look inside, Tenenbaum had it closed, with a jar of green and vile-looking fluid in hand. She walked back to Alice and stuffed it into her other hand, forcing her to put the radio with her weapons in order to get a grip on the glass jar.
"This is about one hundred ADAM. I would be suggesting you spend it on gene tonics. Now go," Tenenbaum turned her attention to disposing the eviscerated slug. "Those sea slugs will not fetch themselves, and the sooner I can start work on this, the better. Good luck, wunderkind."
"Thank you very much," Alice replied. Her thanks fell on deaf ears as the scientist focused on taking the removed organs from the slug and slipping them carefully into more glass jars and test tubes. Alice snorted in amusement as she exited the lab and entered the main room of the safehouse.
'I wonder what Tenenbaum's water bill would amount to if she had to pay one for her handwashing habit,' Alice thought to herself, smirking. 'That sounds like something from one of those plays that Lizzie was so fond of. Something by Shakespeare, I think.'
The girls broke away from their game to wave and smile at Alice, peppering her with questions.
"Where are you going, Alice?"
"Is that ADAM?"
"Be careful of the bad men!"
"Tell us a story about Wonderland, Alice!"
"I want to hear about the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon."
"Not that one again!"
She was quite popular amongst the former Little Sisters, especially when telling them about Wonderland. Her stories were mainly about the Wonderland of her youth, and the one that had emerged in the wake of Bumby's demise. Her stories about Wonderland during her time in Rutledge and under Bumby's care were heavily abridged. The last thing the girls needed to hear was a full description of the Red Queen's monstrous form, or the man that inspired the creation of the Dollmaker. They all had enough trouble with nightmares as it was.
"I'm on an errand for Momma Tenenbaum, children," she answered, putting on a smile for them. "I'll tell you a new story when I get back."
After being forced to promise that she would, Alice was shown out the door and into the Olympus Heights sewers. Becoming friendly with the children had been a bit of a struggle at first for her. Seeing the joy her stories brought to the girls' faces, she had finally conquered the boundary that kept her from identifying with the young ones. One of the reasons why she had never really connected with the Houndsditch orphans was because of how badly they had treated her. Though from what Aster had told her of the vastly improved behaviors of the Houndsditch boys, she could guess who was responsible for forgetting their manners. She hoped the Houndsditch girls had given Ryan's men a lot of trouble.
A quick use of Peeping Tom at the entrance to the sewers showed that the few people milling around the tram station weren't close enough to notice her. One disadvantage of her new clothes were that they marked her as someone who had money to spend, and therefore someone who had no business climbing out of stinking sewer systems. Maybe it would be a good idea to "borrow" some work clothes, though finding a maintenance worker with her sizes would be a chore, even if said worker was a woman.
After waiting fifteen minutes for the tram headed to the University and paying her way onto it, Alice stood near one of the windows and watched the scenery outside of the tram tube go by. As a manta ray passed overhead, its "wings" propelling it through the water like a very large, slow bat, her thoughts turned to the Rapture University for the Arts, Sciences, and Industries.
The University had been the brainchild of both Andrew Ryan and her father, Arthur Liddell. Her father's position as the Dean of Oxford had allowed him to voice his ideas for the education of Britain's children and young adults. Unfortunately, his stances on education weren't popular with his peers. Considered to be "too unconventional", "too liberal", or "too American", her father's attempts to reform the United Kingdom's educational system were stonewalled. His success in obtaining permission to educate first Lizzie and then herself at home had been a slap to the system's face, one of the few he had been able to get in.
After coming to Rapture, Alice could remember Ryan coming to dinner and afterwards he and her father discussing the education system that would best suit Rapture and the philosophies that it embodied. Her father had spent hours in their apartment's study, working out a system that would supplant all others in history, one worthy of a city where individual achievement reigned supreme. Just before the fire though, her father had developed a worried look in his eye whenever the University or any other school was mentioned, and his discussions with Mr. Ryan had begun to border on arguments.
Alice hadn't been in any of the schools since she had left Rutledge, and her education since then had been from Houndsditch, very poor and easily forgotten (thank goodness for the latter). Bumby had told her that it would take some years before she could begin taking classes at RU. While that was probably true, he had obviously been counting on his "treatments" to remove any desires for higher education. And something told her that there had been a very good reason for her father to be upset with the way Ryan was setting up the college.
As the tram began slowing down, Alice got up and stood by the tram door. Now that she was storing everything she needed in Wonderland (or so she assumed), it was much easier to move around. It was also much less conspicuous than wearing her entire arsenal out in public. Even in war-time Rapture, where most had at least one firearm in view, the sight of her walking around with the Pepper Grinder, Teapot Cannon, shotgun, hand cannon, and Vorpal Blade hanging off her would have drawn more attention than she wanted to deal with. She settled for having the hand cannon appear in one of her apron pockets, the large handle poking out as a signal that she was packing heat.
Stepping out of the tram as it slowed to a halt, Alice stopped for a few moments to study the entrance to the Rapture University of the Arts, Sciences, and Industries. Like all of the buildings in Rapture, it was designed with the Art Deco style that Ryan favored so much. The badge booths that controlled the flow of traffic into and out of the university were dominated by a massive arch, with the university's name emblazoned on it in large, brass letters. Above the arch were three large insignias, one for each of the values that the University and Rapture embraced according to Ryan's philosophy: Art, Science, and Industry. A faint memory of three identical insignias in the Lighthouse around the bathysphere that lead down to the city surfaced in her mind.
The memory slipped back into her subconscious as she mounted the flight of stairs that lead to the badge booths, under the watchful eye of two security cameras. Looking at them from the corners of her eyes, Alice wondered what the reasoning was for two cameras right at the university's entrance. She banished the line of thought as she came into view of the badge vendor.
The badge system came with the security cameras and turrets. There were certain areas where these were needed for authorization. Cameras in public places like Arcadia, High Street, and Market Street were set to identify the genetic code of anyone not registered as a Rapture citizen and set the security drones on the infiltrator. A vital area such as Hephaestus was closed to everyone who didn't work there. The only way to get into some areas was to get a badge authorizing their presence in the area. The only people that held access to the entire city, minus the Lighthouse, was Ryan's inner circle, with Ryan himself holding the keys to all of Rapture. If Alice was to get into the University, she was either going to need to get a badge or find a way around the cameras and what other security measures existed in the area.
And since they scanned genetic information instead of relying entirely on visuals, it was likely a better strategy to go along with the badge system than to slip in using Peeping Tom.
"Current student, incoming student, or visitor?" the badge vendor droned as Alice came up to the window. He was a rather large man, with a cigar clamped in his teeth and an incredibly bored look on his face. The Walrus and the Carpenter could have paraded in front of him and he wouldn't have batted an eyelash.
"Visitor, please," Alice answered after a second of thought. The vendor grunted and bent down to retrieve the badge, the slipping of his brown hairline revealing that he wore a toupee. Putting away her grimace and taking out her wallet (she had gotten rid of her bag after some experimentation with her storing abilities), she paid the exorbitant fee for the badge. Looking around at the vendor stands while he calculated her change, Alice noticed that they didn't match the age of the surrounding arch or the ground.
"I take it that these badge stands are relatively new?" she asked, accepting the money he handed to her.
"Yeah," he snorted. "Ryan got these booths up in areas that he deems 'high-risk'. A buncha kids get on Atlas' band wagon, cause a ruckus, and here I am, makin' sure that no suspicious characters or known Atlas sympathizers get onto campus." He took a closer look at her. "Do I know you from somewhere? Ya look familiar."
Know that she shouldn't be on a watchlist for Atlas supporters, Alice took a calculated risk.
"My name is Alice Liddell, if that rings any bells," she answered.
A dim light brightened in the man's eyes for a moment. "Your ole man was settin' up the place back in '47 before that fire, right?"
She bristled at the "ole man" comment. "Yes, yes he was," she answered. "I thought it would be beneficial for me if I came to see how the University he helped to create has come along."
"The brochures on 'How Rapture University fosters Industry and Creativity' are inside," the vendor went on. "Plus, I hear that they dedicated the biggest lecture hall on campus to your ole man, a bust of him's by the entrance."
Caught between annoyance at the "ole man" remark and some level of gratitude towards the effort made to remember him, Alice thanked the man and walked inside.
The main atrium of the university was, in a word, colossal. The floor opened up into a huge plaza, lined by benches and dominated by the massive statue that held up the thick-glass ceiling. The statue's feet were planted firmly in a large, rectangular fountain, the large fountainheads of which represented the Arts, Sciences, and Industries: A woman wearing a beret with a paintbrush in her hand and the tools of a stone carver in the belt around her waist, a bespectacled scientist complete with lab coat and uplifted test tube, and a business tycoon that looked suspiciously like Andrew Ryan, a rolled schematic in hand. All three, arrayed in a semicircle around the statue's feet, had water spouting out of their right hands as if they had taken the Undertow plasmid.
Staircases and a few elevators allowed access to the second and third floors, more arches acting as the entrances to the various departments of the university. Students and faculty made their way up and down the stairs and through the arches, on their way to or leaving their classes. Three students gathered around a professor as he explained some advanced theory of Ryan's to them, while a young couple sat on a bench nearby, eating lunch while looking over study notes. Some tables were set up between the arches, advertising the different clubs and associations available at Rapture University, along with the prices for joining that particular organization.
Noticing the directory right ahead, set between the local vending machines, Alice strode over and began scanning the listings for "Biology Department". Rapture University was a large place, sporting the various colleges, labs, lecture halls, and other facilities necessary for a university to function. She located the Biology Department on the second floor, right next to the Psychology Department. Her eyes ghosted over to the area on the map before snapping right onto one particular room: The Angus Bumby Conference Room.
She remembered Bumby pointing out the naming of the conference room in the Tribune, pride oozing from every pore. Getting one's name plastered on a building or conference room was an important facet of Rapture culture, something of a status symbol. It was certainly encouraged by Ryan, who believed strongly in the idea that one should trumpet their accomplishments and exalt in their pride. Alice could understand the want for recognition, but to utterly disregard humility as part of an actual philosophy? That was just taking it too far.
'Honestly, with the way that Ryan deifies mankind and its accomplishments, it's a wonder that he just doesn't build a temple dedicated to the human race. He'd probably put his face right on the idol along with a gigantic chain in its hands.' She smirked at the mental image of Ryan, dressed in a Roman toga, leading a worship ceremony for a huge statue of himself.
'Then again,' she noted, 'he might have been doing just that when he had Rapture built. Hmm, I wonder what I would find if I investigated that room….'
"Alice?"
Alice jumped and turned to find Aster standing behind her, a hat pulled low over his head, not that it made him any less noticeable thanks to his exceptional height. Even more surprising than his presence was that of Tooth's by his side. Compared to the practical business and work clothes of the passing students and others, her rainbow clothing looked like she had stepped right out of the studio of a drunken artist.
"Aster? Tooth? What are you two doing here?" Alice asked, surprised. "Did MiM send you here for ADAM slugs?"
"That's what Tenenbaum has you doing here?" Tooth said, making a face. "MiM heard that there was supposed to be some kind of Atlas rally held here today. He sent us to make sure it didn't get out of hand, especially if there are splicers in the crowd."
"That, and two Little Sisters will be here with their Big Daddies," Aster added. "If there's one thing I know for certain, it's this: A person is smart, people are stupid. Ya get a bunch of young drongos together, whip them into a frenzy with some half-baked speech, and while the Daddies can probably handle themselves against a bunch of Atlas show ponies, some innocent people are sure to get hurt."
"Not to mention it'll give Ryan an excuse to put more security here, ship more people off to Artemis Suites," Tooth piped in. "We'll also be checking out the Engineering Department for any equipment that might come in handy. Some of the best tech in Rapture has been produced here, like the Air Grabber." She shifted her bag so that the gleaming metal claws of said device poked out. "You would not believe how useful it is."
Alice remembered seeing some kids using them to ride along the pneumo lines. She'd never admit it, but she had wished that she could join them. That, and the Grabber looked like it would make an excellent weapon.
"All that and he sent only you two?" she asked, popping an eyebrow up.
Aster's eyes drifted pointedly around the plaza to two separate spots before coming back to her. Glancing in those directions, Alice spotted North, sitting on a bench and pretending to read a newspaper. Sandy was on the second floor and gave her an enthusiastic wave over the railing, which she returned. Both were armed with their signature weapons, Sandy with his little pistols and North with his twin shotguns. Only in Rapture could one walk around with weapons in full view anywhere without fear of reprisal. She wondered for a moment if her approach with hiding all of her weapons was really the wisest. She was in no way vulnerable, but looking the part would be sure to draw in the unsavory type. A crazed splicer wouldn't notice the deterrent either way, but at least the weapon would be more readily available.
"He must think those attending this rally to be quite dangerous if he saw fit to send all of you," Alice observed. Personally, the Guardians didn't seem the type to keep a covert eye on a "powder-keg situation", as Aster called them. They seemed more the types to start a situation or barge into an ongoing one and stop it. Besides, they all had a tendency to stick out like barnacles on a whale, what with North's bulk and booming voice, Tooth's flamboyant style sense, Aster's height, and Sandy's lack thereof.
"Tensions are high here at RU," Aster explained. "From what I've heard, the students are divided right down the middle. Half of 'em are on Ryan's bandwagon, while the other half thinks that Atlas walks on water. Our main goal is to protect the Little Sisters, but if we keep a bunch of young idiots from killin' each other, that's definitely a win in my books."
Alice nodded before her mouth morphed into a half-smirk. "You know," she said in mock hurt, "most of the students are my age, Aster. Do I count as a 'young idiot'?"
Aster sputtered for a moment while Tooth giggled. "Not hardly, Half Pint," he finally growled. Reaching behind his back, he unclipped a radio identical to the one that Tenenbaum had given her. "Ya got anything that can pick up short-wave frequencies? I'd get you one myself, just haven't got the chance yet."
"Tenenbaum did," Alice answered, holding up the radio. "If you need my aid, think nothing of contacting me. I'll be more than happy to help if things take a turn for the worst."
"And we'll do the same for you, Alice," Tooth said. "You know, not that you'll really need our help, but if you want it anyway, we're just a radio call away. And if we hear about anything going down in the Biology Department, we'll be sure to let you know."
"Likewise," Alice said. "Take care, Aster, Tooth. I'll see you tonight at North's."
While they walked off, Tooth pretending to be enamored with the giant statue holding up the ceiling, Alice turned back to the map and took note of both the Biology and Psychology Department's locations. The slugs would likely be located in one of the labs, and Psychology was located on the same floor, allowing for a quick detour to Bumby's conference room.
There was likely nothing in the room that would be of any interest to her, and if there was any more condemning evidence against him, it wouldn't really matter. However, ever since she had learned the truth about Bumby, the urge to go through anything that belonged to him had been stronger than her distaste for him. It wasn't macabre curiosity that drew her; it was a desire to find out the truth, no matter how sordid or disturbing. Bumby has once told her that light was useless if what it revealed caused pain and suffering. Now, she would always seek out the truth no matter the cost. A pleasant reality built on a lie was little better than a miserable existence founded with truth.
Before she left for Bumby's conference room, she checked out the selections available on the Gatherer's Garden located just behind the directory. Besides the usual Health and EVE Upgrades, there was quite a selection of gene tonics, such as BrainBoost and SportBoost. Each one had specialized advertisements pointing out how they were perfect for a university setting.
After some thought, Alice bought Speedy Hacker ("Excellent for Understanding the Basics of Rapture Technology!"), Electric Flesh ("Budding Electricians No Longer have to Fear Live Wires!"), and Human Inferno ("Perfect for Lab Experiments Gone Awry!"), leaving her with 40 ADAM left. The latter two were from experience. Alice didn't appreciate being electrocuted, and the idea of possessing a degree of immunity from fire sounded heavenly.
Smiling at the euphoria granted by the tonics, Alice discarded the syringes and headed towards the nearest flight of stairs, pointedly ignoring the disgusted looks sent her way, supposedly by those who either abstained from splicing entirely or sought to control their intake. She paid them no mind, long used to expressions of judgement. And besides, those trying to space out their splicing, the majority, would ultimately find the effort futile without an A-gene. A few stared at her hungrily, and not in the way she was used to. She gave those ADAM-hungry passersby a glare and made sure that they could see the Hand Cannon poking out of her pocket. They scurried away, deciding that she wasn't interested in sharing any leftover ADAM.
Approaching the staircase, Alice noticed something. At the sides of each staircase and elevator, there were two large potted plants, the greenery they supported meant to provide a calming environment to the students passing by. The pot ahead, easily three feet tall, had something poking out through its leaves. As she passed by the pot and mounted the stairs, she discretely removed the offending object, revealing it to be an audio diary by a "Jasper Daley". The date following the diary's title of "First Day at RU" was August 19, 1956.
"Well, my first day at Rapture University for the Arts, Sciences, and Industries went far better than I expected. Class requirements aren't as hard as I thought they would be…yet. I think I actually made a friend in one of my classes, guy by the name of Chester Rodfield. Got some interesting ideas for electricity. We're lab partners in the same class, so maybe we can work together on project ideas in our spare time. For now, I should probably finish looking over the syllabus' and get ready for tomorrow. Or would it be syllabi? Heh, there's a reason I'm studying engineering and not English."
The American-accented voice went out with the click of the audio diary. The diary itself wasn't really useful for anything, yet there was something nice about hearing about a time and life in Rapture which wasn't about the war or splicing or any of the madness eating the city from the inside out. Alice stowed the diary away, reasoning that she would return it to Jasper Daley if she happened upon him. That diary had been made in 1956, so he was likely finishing his senior year at the University.
Reaching the second floor, Alice thought back to the directory's map and turned towards the direction of the Psychology Department. Taking the radio out of her pocket, she pressed the side button and spoke into the device.
"Tenenbaum, I'm on the second floor of the University. I'll be making a quick detour before I go to the Biology Department. Do you have any notion where I can find the slugs?"
"The slugs will most likely be living in a tank in one of the labs. Why are you making detour?" the German scientist questioned.
"Dr. Angus Bumby had a conference room named after him and I'm going to investigate it," Alice replied. She about jumped at the explosion of static that exploded from the radio's speaker.
"Scheisse, why are you doing that? There is nothing to gain from going through Bumby's things!" Tenenbaum sounded very perturbed. "We need those slugs, dummes Mädchen!"
Alice didn't know a word of German, but she knew an insult when she heard one.
"First," she almost growled into the radio, "the biology labs are practically next door to that conference room. A delay of about ten to fifteen minutes isn't going to destroy your antidote plasmid." Bumby's involvement in the Little Sister project came to the forefront. "And second, I know that Bumby helped you and Suchong with your nasty little experiments, so there might be something that helps us with your current research."
The radio was silent for a moment, then a loud sigh came across.
"Fein. Sorry, I am...what is word? Anxious. Go where you need to, just be careful and be hurrying back when you are done. When I am not being busy, I start thinking about my old research."
Alice could guess what she meant by "old research", and she could understand not wanting to think about the past.
"Try doing something to pass the time," she advised. "Play solitaire, read a book—preferably nothing on the subject of genetics. You could even try playing a game with the girls or reading them a story."
"I will be taking your advice into consideration," Tenenbaum replied after a moment. "Take care, wunderkind." The connection broke off with a static-filled whine, and she put the radio back in Wonderland.
"It appears that Tenenbaum has no issues with the stereotype of the 'antisocial scientist'," Alice thought to herself. "If that's the way she operates, best to humor her when possible, and set my foot down when it's not. I've dealt with more eccentric, ruder personalities after all. Compared to the Hatter or the Carpenter, Tenenbaum is much easier to deal with. If only I knew what her German insults meant."
The walkways of both the second and third floors ran the length of the plaza, and the archway leading to Psychology was flush with the side of the support statue. The wall leading to the arch was covered with various posters and bulletins. Glancing at them as she passed, Alice spotted concerts events and art exhibits sponsored by Sander Cohen, a medical demonstration at RU's Medical Theater featuring Dr. Steinman, a special lecture at the Botanical Wing with Julie Langford officiating, and many other activities for the elite of Rapture to show themselves off to the student body.
It was an old, tattered bulletin on the end that made her stop short and take a second look. Right next to a schedule of tours to Hephaestus was an announcement of a guest speaker event on November 21, 1958, the Friday just before the week of Thanksgiving, and also the one after her discovery of Bumby's true nature. Ripping the sheet of paper from the wall, Alice glanced over it to confirm her suspicions.
Special Guest Speakers at Arthur Liddell Hall.
Date: November 21, 1958.
Time: 6:00 PM.
Speakers: Dr. Heironymous Q. Wilson on "Alternative Treatment Methods in Psychiatry and their Validity" and Dr. Angus Bumby on "The Benefits of Memory Manipulation in Degenerate Children and Adolescents."
Rates: $5.00 for students. $7.50 for students majoring in Psychology.
A large "X" had been drawn over Bumby's name and speech, along with a very nasty obscenity with which Alice agreed wholeheartedly. The idea of Bumby giving a guest lecture in a hall named after her father was just appalling. She could just imagine the self-satisfied smirk on his face as he stood in front of all those admiring students and belted out his own praises while inwardly laughing over the horrid irony of the lecture hall's name. Crumbling the bulletin into a ball, Alice stuffed it into a nearby garbage can before continuing on her way.
The entrance of the Psychology Department, once the "Sofia Lamb Psychology Department", came into view, along with some construction equipment. Walking by the open tool box and various tools spilling out onto the ground next to the arch, Alice's foot smacked something right into her path. The object proved to be another audio diary. She managed to pick it up without breaking stride.
"Honestly, why do the idiots who make these leave them lying around for the random stranger to pick up?" she mentally groused. "It's like they're begging for others to know any personal information that's on the diary."
Alice considered putting it back for a moment until she caught sight of the diary's title: "Slug Tank Lock", and it was by Jasper Daley from the day before.
"Then again, if Mr. Daley is going to conveniently leave information vital to my errands just lying around for me to find, he and the other diarists can do it to their heart's content," she smirked in thought. She tapped the play button and held it up to her ear.
"Whoo boy, this last job was a doozy! It may be a compliment to have the Dean of a college come to you with a job, but it gets old fast. The Dean for the Biology Department, Dr. Jemmings, gave me the job of fixing and reinforcing the locks on the ADAM slug tanks. The slug tank key code is 4554. Bunch of spliceheads tried to break in and steal the slugs. Not like they'd get that much ADAM from the slugs alone. Idiots. Right now, I've the lock for the door to the 'Angus Bumby Conference Room' done and that's set to 8743. They're keeping all of Bumby's things in that room until they can figure out what to keep and what to throw out. Personally, I wouldn't care if any of his stuff gets vandalized, the bastard."
"Well," Alice smiled, "that's a turn of luck, two key codes for the price of one."
The arch opened to a tunnel where a large, red octopus lay sprawled all over the glass, allowing passersby a look at its large beak and its eight long arms of suckers leaving prints all over the glass. As Alice walked underneath it, the soft-bodied creature craned his head, watching her pass with its pure black, inhuman eyes, which gleamed with what she swore was recognition. Glancing back at it before the curve of the tunnel, she could have sworn that an old bottle was wrapped in one of its tentacles.
The Securis door at the end of the tunnel slid open, allowing access to the Psychology Department. It was basically a scaled-down version of the atrium, about half as long and only two stories, with a giant head in place of the large statue and fountainheads, water flowing down its sides like shifting, stringy hair. Between each arch was a portrait or bust of a famous psychologist with a list of their accomplishments printed in brass underneath them. Spread around the Department were diagrams and models of the human nervous system, carefully pointing out the different sections of the brain and its functions.
Alice couldn't help but repress a shiver as she passed by one of these diagrams. When she had been fighting her way through the Dollmaker's Workshop, she had seen similar diagrams portraying horrendous and disgusting aberrations such as a uterus somehow existing inside the human brain. Thinking back on the horrifying and revolting things that had populated both Queensland and the Dollhouse, she wondered just how a psych analyzation with one of the students or faculty here would go.
"Probably send me back to Rutledge wrapped in a straitjacket," she thought darkly. Not that she would really blame the hypothetical student or faculty member.
Passing by the classrooms and the offices of the instructor's, the air filled with ideas and theories such as "the use of Freudian slips to detect Parasites", "how Pavlovian conditioning is used by the Parasites to target the great", and "how Gestalt psychology could be used to reinforce Ryanism", she couldn't help but notice that Aster was right about the students. Here, it was veiled behind academic objectivity, but the divide between the students that supported Ryan and those who supported Atlas was clear to see. And all that was needed to ignite physical violence was a single spark.
The door to the Angus Bumby Conference Room was sealed shut with a very new, very imposing lock. A lock which surrendered at the first application of "8743". Alice slipped inside as soon as the door opened and let out a sigh as it closed behind her. When the lights came on, she almost jumped out of her stockings. On the wall opposite the door was a life-size painting of the man himself, resplendent in his fine suit, those wire-rim glasses, and that insufferable smile.
Alice glared at the picture and then at the rest of the room. As conference rooms went, it was very nice: the table was all-wood, a luxury where the only sources of lumber in Rapture were the saplings in Arcadia and the shipwrecks spread along the ocean floor. Smoothed-down coral that would give Tooth a run for her money in the color department were inlaid into the legs and sides of the table. Eel skin leather had been used to make the chairs, the light reflecting off of it enough to make one want to touch it. Bumby must have halved his bank account in order to furnish his conference room so lavishly.
The table was currently the resting place for a veritable mountain of books, papers, and cardboard boxes, all of them holding the intellectual property of one Dr. Angus Bumby. The audio diary lying right on top was the first object to go under scrutiny. Jasper Daley had seen fit to leave this one, titled "The Bastard" and dated November 21, with Bumby's things since it eloquently expressed his thoughts and feelings on the passing of the doctor.
"What a conniving, wretched bastard! I never liked the man, he always seemed to think he was so much smarter than the rest of us, especially if you weren't a psychology major, but damn. I never would have pegged him as a child trafficker, let alone a rapist and an arsonist! Poor Joyce isn't taking this well at all. She really looked up to Bumby, thought he was the crème de la crème of psychology, especially after Ryan knocked Lamb off her pedestal. Maybe an evening at the Tea Garden will help cheer her up, and a show at Fleet Hall afterwards to make sure."
Judging from his tone whenever he mentioned this "Joyce", it was easy enough for Alice to divine that between the first diary and this one Jasper had managed to find himself a girl, one he cared for very much.
The cabinets in Suchong's office had been a mess. The boxes' contents were much more organized, but that hadn't been the intention of whomever had packed them with Bumby's papers and lecture notes. The orderliness had been part of the storage system Bumby had used prior to the relocation of his things to the conference room. Sorting through the "L", "S", and "O" sections (Little, Sister, and Orphan), she would occasionally find a paper on the fallacies of Anna Freud's psychoanalytic child psychology, or a pamphlet on recognizing the language of Parasites. Or another audio diary by the man himself.
This one, she noticed, lacked a date. It wasn't missing Bumby's name, or its title, "Suchong's W-Y-K". She clicked it on, wondering what Bumby had to say about his "business associate".
"Of all the great minds here in Rapture, the one closest to my own is that slant Yi Suchong. Normally I wouldn't assign such acclaim to an oriental, but praise is due where it is due after all. My former transactions with him garnered enough trust that he told me about this 'W-Y-K' plasmid. He didn't share what the letters meant, but he did tell me what the plasmid itself did: it conditions the mind of the user to be susceptible to a certain command phrase! Just a single injection, and you can tell the subject to do whatever you want! Here's a nice, little fantasy: Beautiful Alice Liddell, under the thrall of the W-Y-K conditioning. Ooh, that is a nice thought."
Alice glared down at the offending diary as it clicked to a stop and had to restrain herself from smashing it against the table. She settled for telekinetically ripping Bumby's portrait from the wall and slashing it to ribbons with the Vorpal Blade, pretending to live out one of her own fantasies. When the portrait was nothing more than ribbons barely hanging on to the frame, she let it fall to the ground and resumed her search, feeling a lot better.
After exhausting the L, S, and O sections, Alice was about to leave when she remembered the organ imperative to the studies of all psychologists: the brain. The "B" section was found and thoroughly sifted through, her eyes darting over the everything she could find on the human brain.
"If I can find anything of Bumby's pertaining to the human organ of thought, I just might be able to give Tenenbaum an edge in curing the Little Sisters of their conditioning!"
The six that Tenenbaum had rescued had only been in the Little Sister program for a few weeks, long enough to be implanted with the slug and on the initial steps in the mental conditioning. The conditioning had been easily overcome at that stage, with only their memories wanting. But when she and the Guardians started bringing in those Sisters who had been converted months or even years ago, they were going to need all the help they could get.
Flipping through the pages, Alice was starting to get frustrated. For all she knew, Ryan's people had already gone through these and took out everything that pertained to the Little Sisters. It would be just like Ryan to do that too, to cover up his footsteps of anything that could turn Rapturites against him. One thing was certain, Tenenbuam wasn't going to like the idea of her going off on a wild salmon chase, if she didn't find anything for her troubles.
She was almost done with the stack and with the entire situation when her eyes caught the words "pre-frontal lobe of the brain". It was a research report that Bumby had written on "one of the most important lobes of the human brain". It apparently was the part that coordinated behaviors such as stubbornness, free will, creativity, individuality, and personality. Included with the sheath of papers was an article from a medical journal that Bumby had regularly written to.
As he put it in the article's summary: "The pre-frontal lobe is responsible for everything that makes an individual unique, makes them a person. Take that away, and they become nothing but an empty void to filled. There are myriad ways of applying this knowledge to change or affect an individual's behavior, ranging from my hypnosis techniques and various drugs, to the crude yet effective method of a trans-orbital lobotomy."
As she recognized what the words "trans-orbital lobotomy", meant, Alice felt a chill ghost up and down her spine, almost like someone had walked across her grave. Rather, it felt like she was one walking across someone else's grave. Shaking off the feeling, she quickly gathered up the papers on the pre-frontal lobe and stored them away, exiting the conference room as quickly as she had come.
"Tenenbaum," she lowered her voice to avoid attention, "I didn't find anything on the Little Sisters directly, but I did find Bumby's research on the pre-frontal lobes of the brain. It appears that he was especially interested in those of young children, both male and female. Once I get the slugs, I'll work my way back to the safehouse."
"Wunderbar," Tenenbaum breathed through the speaker. "I hope that that eel Bumby is rolling in his grave as we use his research to be saving the Little Sisters. Be hurrying back as soon as you can."
The Biology Department, formerly called the "Brigid Tenenbaum Biology Department" for her discovery of the ADAM slug but now just know as the "Biology Department", was only a little further down the hall from the Psychology Department. Walking past an alcove, Alice almost didn't notice them. Stopping and peering into the darkened space, Alice noticed several objects slumped in the shadowed corners. Other than the Circus of Values and the pneumo tube, there was nothing else in the area, and with the objects hidden behind the pneumo and the vending machines, it wasn't surprising that no one else had noticed them.
"I should just ignore them," Alice thought to herself. "For all I know, the slug display room will be occupied with students staying there for the duration of the day, which wouldn't bear well with my 'stunted sense of patience', as Bumby used to put it."
The mysterious lumps continued to sit behind the pneumo tube and the machine, both inviting her to investigate and warning her to ignore it and go on her merry way. The invitation won out over the warning.
"And my habit of following furry creatures into dark holes has returned," Alice muttered, thinking back to the dark surroundings that preceded a trip to Wonderland. "And no animals this time to give me an excuse, just mysterious lumps in the dark. Likely nasty lumps as well."
As it turned out, they were nasty lumps, just not in the way she had expected.
By the time she was five feet from the things, her eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to realize that the nearest one was wearing shoes and that there was a red puddle staining the carpet all around it, as did the others.
The three bodies were that of two young men and a young woman, their clothes stained red, their eyes lifeless. She studied the body of the closest one. His throat had been slit, his body left crumpled next to the pneumo tube, which itself was spattered red with his blood. His brown eyes were frozen in an expression of surprise, one hand clamped around his throat in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. The fingers of the other hand were almost clasped into a fist, like someone had forcefully removed something from his death grip.
The other boy was slumped against the Circus of Values, his dead expression an odd combination of shock and resignation, his glasses about to fall off his face. An audio diary lay next to him, probably his last. The cause of his death was a stab wound in his side where, judging by the amount of congealed blood spreading out from it, an artery ran through that specific location.
The girl was a fetching redhead whose brilliant green eyes were only dulled by death. A bloodied knife lay in her left hand, though it had likely started in her right. She has slit her own wrists and then lay against the bespectacled boy while the life had drained out of her.
Alice studied them first in surprise and then with a resigned sorrow before taking a quick look around, and then going through their pockets. Insensitive? Yes. Wrong? Probably. Could there be a clue as to why they were all dead, or could one of them have something that could prove useful later on? Possibly.
The search through their pockets yielded money, a pep bar, an audio diary from the first boy, and their Student IDs. Examining the IDs, Alice almost dropped them all when she found the names inscribed into their sides: Chester Rodfield, Jasper Daley, and Joyce Roberts.
'What happened here?' Alice wondered, looking down at the dead trio. 'Did someone murder you all and slice Joyce's wrists to make it look like a double murder/suicide? A love triangle gone horribly wrong? Or were you caught in something beyond your control?'
Ducking down behind the vending machine as a group of students passed by, Alice sighed and flicked the first audio diary on, made by Chester Rodfield two day earlier about "Business vs. Friendship".
"Well, talking with Jasper didn't go as planned. He kicked me out of our workshop and revoked my access. For Ryan's sake, can't he see that selling the weapon schematics to Webster will help Rapture to stand against Atlas and his bandits? Plus, we'd be making a metric ton of cash at the same time. And then there's the whole situation with Joyce. As much as I value Jasper's friendship, I can't let her steal them. Hopefully, the engineering tonics I just took should be enough to hack the workshop door. Jasper, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry, but it's time I added my weight to the Great Chain."
"A believer in Ryan's Great Chain, and a thief at the same time." Alice looked down her nose at Chester Rodfield's body, shaking her head. "I wonder if you found your beliefs worth dying for."
Glancing down at the young man that used to be Jasper Daley, Alice reached over to gently move his arm off the diary. Besides his name and picture, the diary only held a title, which was literally: " #$%/&* Idiot!"
"I can't believe it! Chester went ahead and took the weapon designs! And the prototype buckshot! I told him that we weren't selling anything to that Lloyd Webster. He'll start selling them through his vending machines, both Ryan and Atlas' people will get their hands on it, and then they'll be killing each with our inventions! Proximity mines, electric gel, exploding buckshot, trap-bolts; it'd be a massacre! First going behind my back with that Webster creep, then having the gall to say that Joyce is an Atlas supporter, and now this! If he's not dead by the end of the day, he's either lucky or invincible."
"Idiot," she muttered halfheartedly. She had an idea how it went down: Rodfield had come to the pneumo tube to send these schematics and prototype to Webster where he had been ambushed, before or after he had sent off his stolen goods she couldn't tell. There had been a struggle, which ended with Daley and Rodfield dead and Roberts committing suicide. Evidently, Daley's death hadn't been a part of her personal agenda. The only way this could be any more tragic would be if she had seen them as ADAM "ghosts".
MiM had explained the phenomena to her after she had witnessed a very gruesome murder. Now that she wasn't having troubles with her memories, those of the dead saw fit to torment her. She honestly would have preferred real ghosts to memories not her own.
The vending machine next to her came alive with a whirring grumble and clownish laughter, startling her.
"Fill your cravings at the Circus of Values!" it proclaimed. Alice spitefully shot a Possession specter right into the impish face of the machine's clown face. She collected the cascade of coins that came shooting out of the machine's mouth before leaving the tragic scene behind her.
The rest of the trip to the Biology Department was a hurried, uneventful affair. She noted absently that the Biology Department's main floor was dominated by a massive display of shark jaws in place of the fountain. The slug tanks were even easier to find. They were advertised as a display all over the department, after all.
After locating the display ("Come see the Unique Creature Responsible for the Wonders of ADAM!"), Alice waited for the room to clear before hacking the room's security camera and turning it off. Unlocking the slug tank with the code "4554", she took one long look at the tank's red-spotted inhabitants and radioed Tenenbaum.
"Hello Tenenbaum, I have a quick question concerning the slugs: do you need them alive?"
"No, the slugs do not need to be living. Why-," Before the scientist could finish her question, Alice fired a bolt of Shock Jockey into the water, killing the slugs instantaneously. "- do you ask? Are you alright Alice?"
"I'm fine, Tenenbaum, I just need a vessel to hold the slugs in and I'll be on my way back," Alice answered, noticing a cabinet of large, glass jars perfect for transporting the slugs. Picking one up and hefting it experimentally, she found it too heavy and placed it back on the shelf.
"I hope you don't mind if the slugs are a bit crispy," she added. The arcs of electricity hadn't quite finished their dance on the water's surface. "I didn't care for the idea of attempting to catch them alive."
"How would they be crispy? Oh, never mind," Tenenbaum muttered. "The girls are looking forward to your return. See you soon, wunderkind." She signed off as Alice found a jar that wasn't too heavy that would be able to contain all the slugs. Stuffing them in with some water, she stored the jar away as she left the display room.
About halfway back to the atrium, Tooth's voice came in over the radio with a screech of static.
"Whoops, sorry about that. Alice, would you be able to help us with something?"
"I've acquired what I came for," Alice answered into the radio. "What do you need my assistance for?"
"Well, I was talking to this kid who sold me this hacking dart that works like those automatic hackers when he mentioned this huge theft of EVE hypos earlier. Either the perp is the biggest EVE addict in Rapture, or something's going down that requires a whole lot of plasmid usage." Tooth sighed heavily. "We were afraid that something like that might happen. The Big Daddies were sighted a few minutes ago, and the boys went off to make sure that nothing happened to the Little Sisters. Killing the Daddies and taking the Sisters would whip the crowd into a frenzy."
"I'll stay alert," Alice answered. "How many of the protector/gatherer pairs are there, and where are they?"
"There are two, and both of the protectors are Bouncers," Tooth replied. "Aster and Sandy are tailing the Daddy and Sister that wandered into the Economics Department, while North's pair is in the hallway leading into the Biology Department."
Alice mentally retraced the route from her current location outside the Display Room to the tunnel connecting the Biology Department to the RU's atrium and considered the slow pace of the Daddies.
"I believe that I'm going to meet up with him soon given my current path," Alice told her. "I'll stay with North until the rally is over. If they're trying to make a statement by killing the Big Daddies, they'll likely leave them alone once the rally is over. Though they could try again at a later date."
Before Tooth could answer, a cry unlike any Alice had ever heard rang throughout the Department. Pain and rage mixed together in a voice that could have come from a beached, mechanical whale. As the cries of said whale were mixed with the echoes of gunfire moments later, Alice's quick walk turned into a run.
"Tooth," she said haltingly into the radio, her speech jostled by both her run and the students not quick enough to get out of her way, "there's a disturbance up ahead, and North's Bouncer sounds like it's in its death throes! I'll contact you in a moment!" She banished the radio before Tooth could reply and ran harder, afraid of what she would find at the end of that unending roar of pain and anger.
About forty yards from the tunnel to the atrium, the roars abruptly ended and the guns abated soon after. Cursing her inability to Dodge in the real world, Alice was so focused on the tunnel that she didn't see the leg set out to trip her.
Sprawling forward on her front, just barely able to bring her arms to prevent smacking her face on the tiles, Alice scrabbled to her feet, too focused on her goal to chew out her tripper properly. Before she could start running, a hand gripped her shoulder, stopping her short.
"Well now, little lady, where are you off in such a hurry?" a smooth, suave voice asked her. She turned to find a young man in suspenders and a hat pulled low over his eyes, which glinted dangerously. If he was spliced, he wasn't showing it yet.
"Let me go!" She batted his arm off, turning back to the tunnel. When he grabbed her and attempted to wrench it and bring her to the ground, she brought out the Vorpal Blade in her other hand and slashed him from shoulder to thigh with one cut.
As he jumped back, screaming in pain and clutching at the huge cut that would have bisected him if the entire blade and more force had been used, she caught movement in her peripheral vision. Two more suspender-wearing thugs advanced on her, bringing out their firearms and aiming them.
Bringing out her telekinesis, Alice hurled the Vorpal at the one with the shotgun, impaling him through the neck. Before she could pull the blade back and hurl it at the other, he opened fire with his pistol in a frenzy of fear, fanning the hammer until his last bullet hit her in the left shoulder.
Spinning from the blunt force of the bullet, Alice came to a stop and brought the Hand Cannon to bear on the shooter, who was attempting to reload his pistol while fumbling with the bullets. A single shot to the heart brought him down.
Before the pain from the bullet had a chance to register, a bellowing voice echoed from the tunnel, English interspersed with angry Russian. More gunshots rang out, followed by a burst of blue light which abruptly ended both the voice and the gunshots.
"North!" Alice retrieved her blade from the downed man struggling to crawl in his own blood, and with a flick of her wrist, opened the wound further. Ignoring both his gurgles and his slashed comrade's continued screams, she shot down the tunnel as the adrenaline from the fight set into her veins.
Racing down the tunnel, she almost ran into the corpse of the Big Daddy. Her gag reflex came up as the scent of burnt metal and flesh added itself to the cyborg's usual stench of dead fish, stagnant water, and oil. Stepping around the massive corpse, which took up most of the tunnel, Alice found two more bodies, both of them ordinary people, and North.
The big Russian was struggling to his feet, clutching his hand to his chest as smoke rolled off him and his hair all stood up on end. If not for the circumstances, the sight of his hair and beard standing straight up in the air would have been amusing.
"North!" Alice ran forward and supported the older man as he climbed to his feet, coughing terribly. Up close, Alice could smell burnt flesh and clothe radiating off of him. This time, she had to work hard to keep from vomiting, the smell of North's burns bringing up unpleasant scenes and thoughts in her head that the Daddy's metal overtones couldn't.
"What happened?" She managed to gasp out, helping North to lean against the wall while she summoned a first aid kit.
"They came out of nowhere," North grunted. "They lured Little Sister in with corpse, with electric crystals for Big Daddy. They shocked him with electricity while others used tommy guns and shotguns. Cowardly ublyudki," he spat.
"And your wound?" Alice asked, dapping burn medicine from the kit onto any exposed, burned skin, making North inhale sharply.
"They grabbed the child," he managed to grind out. "I shot two of them before stepping on little crystal, clumsy idiot that I am. It is good thing that I am so big." He stood up and groaned. "Do not want to do that again."
Before Alice could say anything, North's radio turned on with a whine of static.
Tooth's voice cried out from its speaker in a panic. "North, what happened? Where are you?"
Alice grabbed the radio and answered. "North's Big Daddy was slain and the Little Sister taken," she reported brusquely. "North was wounded when he intervened. Where's Aster and Sandy's Big Daddy?"
"Dead," Tooth replied bitterly, "and the Little Sister taken. They sowed the corridor with Shock Jockey traps and tricked the Daddy into running through them while they shot at it from a distance. Cowards. Aster and Sandy are cornered by some traps. Head to the atrium; we'll be there as soon as I get them out!"
North pushed himself from the wall and began to run forward, his face twisted in obvious pain. Alice ran beside him and grabbed his shoulder, supporting him as they ran. She ignored his protests that as an "old soldier", he didn't need her help, and he was just slowing her down. Alice just growled to him that they would likely need both her and the Guardians in the plaza, so would he just let her help him? He grunted in affirmation.
The rally was in full swing by the time they got down to the main floor. Behind the statue on the far end of the fountain from the entrance, a stage had been set up. A man in working clothes stood on it, expounding on the vices of Andrew Ryan and Rapture and extolling the virtues of the system that Atlas would create; a combination of the various brands of socialism found on the surface. The crowd consisted of students and some faculty members, Alice noted with a little surprise. Most of them were openly armed with various firearms, while others sported ammo belts filled with EVE hypos. Only a few had obvious signs of splicing. The rest of the plaza was almost empty, the few students that were out hurrying for shelter. Ryan Security would have been on its way, if it wasn't for the armed men guarding both the telephones located at the directory and the entrance.
The other Guardians arrived at the first floor as soon as Alice and North did. They met at the archway leading to the "Adam Smith Economic Department". None of them looked the worse for wear, though Tooth's forehead shone with a sheen of sweat from destroying the traps.
"North, what happened? Are you alright?" the small woman asked as soon as she caught sight of him. "One of those electric splicers did this to you?"
"He stepped on a Jockey trap," Alice answered, wincing as the adrenaline began to wear off and the wound on her shoulder screamed in pain. "It was a small one, and given his physique, I believe that he'll be fine."
"Alice, your shoulder!" Aster yelped. Alice glanced at her left shoulder to find blood oozing in a steady stream from the bullet wound.
"Make it quick," she ordered Aster as she handed him a first aid kit. "We can extract the bullet later when we've saved the Little-"
"Oh no!" Tooth screamed out. "Stop!"
Following Tooth's horrified gaze and outstretched hand, Alice and the other Guardians noticed the screen set up on the stage and the makeshift surgeon's table set up behind it. The surgeon himself came into focus just as he removed his hand from within the abdomen of the Little Sister strapped to the gurney, a large ADAM slug wriggling in his grasp. The Little Sister's struggles against the straps ceased as the slug came out, the light from her eyes going out with her life.
"This is what we can do when we work together!" the speaker bellowed as he took the slug from the surgeon and held it out to the crowd, their cheers almost blocking his own voice out.
"Together, we can take back what Ryan has stolen from us!" he continued even as the girl's blood dripped down his arm. "We will take the power that he has hoarded for himself and his friends, we will put down their lapdogs and break down their doors, and then Rapture will be ours! Are you with us? Are you with ATLAS?!"
As the crowd screamed back "YES! YES!", Alice only had eyes for the unmoving form on the gurney. An innocent life had been taken on that stage. Enslaved by Ryan, and now murdered by Atlas. And they had been so close to saving it. And then her eyes fell on the surgeon as he prepared his scalpel for the other Little Sister, strapped to her own gurney.
"NO!" she screamed. The Pepper Grinder materialized in her hands and she opened fire on the surgeon. His surprised scream abruptly ended as the bullets burrowed their way through his body and then out, his body crashing to the stage with the screen, the Little Sister screaming at the newfound chaos. The speaker threw himself to the ground, protecting the slug from the onslaught.
"Ryanists!" he screamed to the crowd as they ducked and hollered in confusion and fright. "Kill them!"
The Guardians already had their weapons out, a determination that Alice had only seen on North and Sandy's faces at the Kashmir on their faces, along with a fury that matched the one coursing through her veins. The crowd had known of the atrocity going on behind that screen, and still they believed in Atlas' cause. They were not going to let these people slide.
"Sandy, Aster, get the little girl!" North boomed as he raised his shotguns. "Tooth, get to high place and snipe! Alice, you and I teach lesson to these heathens!"
And with that, chaos broke loose.
The armed members of the crowd opened fire while those without weapons ran for it. Aster and Sandy jumped into the fountain, taking shelter behind the three fountainheads, their respective pistols coming out to take shots at the crowd, a shotgun taking bits and pieces out of their brass cover and bullets sending water shooting up in spurts.
Alice caught sight of Tooth flying straight up through the air, her Air Grabber extended on her arm, her face a startling combination of fury and joy. A Shock Jockey bolt missed her by inches as she flew upward, coming to rest on the head of the statue, from which she began sniping using her crossbow.
Both she and North ran for the cover that a nearby archway provided, the boom of his shotguns and the rattle of her Grinder filling their ears while bullets whistled by. Taking cover, Alice poked her head out to scope the situation while North reloaded his shotguns. The crowd had shrunk down to about two or three dozen people, all of them armed with firearms and/or plasmids, and they were conveniently grouped together.
"Amateurs," Alice said in disgust as she traded in the Grinder for the Teapot Cannon. Jumping out of cover as a lull in the gunfire presented itself, she aimed the Cannon and unloaded the four frag grenades within into the crowd. Screams took the place of gunfire as the grenades detonated, sending broken bodies flying while disintegrating others. The Guardians took advantage of the surprise attack to unload their weapons into the survivors, using the chaos to even the odds.
The guards at the entrance and telephones charged forward, firing their tommy guns from the hip. One of them attempted to shoot a bolt of electricity into the fountain, missing the water and striking the side instead. A crossbow bolt sprouting in his head prevented him from a second attempt.
"Time to see if my investment with Mr. Fink was worth it," Alice growled from her cover by the fountain. Bringing up the plasmid she had received from said salesman the day before, she charged it and then let it out.
A tentacle of water sprouted from her sucker-covered hand and shot over to the guards, capturing them in its liquid grasp and bringing their struggling forms to rest in front of her and North. Caught in the watery tendrils, the guards were helpless against the two of them, and a few moments later, their buckshot-ridden corpses lay on the ground, the water from the Undertow tainted with their blood.
"Alice!" North yelled as he pivoted and shooting an attacking Jockey before it could shoot at them, sending fragments of purple crystals to shatter on floor in arcs of electricity. "Use water plasmid to ensnare attackers! Get strongest ones first! Understand?!"
"Got it!" she yelled back, readying another tentacle and unleashing it towards a splicer who was using an Air Grabber in an attempt to reach Tooth and bludgeon her to death with it.
A quick pattern developed: Dodge enemy fire. Run for cover. Reload weapons. Replenish EVE. Ensnare. Kill. Repeat. North switched to the tommy gun on his back when he ran out of buckshot, spraying enemies from longer range with an uncanny accuracy. Tooth continued to rain down bolts from her perch on the statue's head, her violet eyes the color of death for those who fell into her sights. Aster and Sandy had gotten out of the fountain after the nearly fatal electrical attack, ducking in and out of cover as they worked their way towards the stage and providing support to Alice when she was reeling in those same splicers for punishment. Aster flicked out his boomerang when his guns ran dry, the blade that popped out on its outward flight cutting the throat of a climbing spider-splicer.
At one point, Sandy jumped back onto the fountain and whipped a woman who was aiming a grenade launcher at Alice and North right across the eyes. He put her out of her blind, shrieking misery a moment later, her hands covering her eyes and her mouth open in a scream.
The fight seemed to last for hours, when only a few minutes had passed by the time that the former attackers were running for their lives. One moment they were being attacked, the next they were spraying bullets at the retreating forms of the survivors. Aster and Sandy made it up to the stage and, after shooting a man trying to wrestle the Little Sister from her gurney, released the girl from the confining straps.
"We got the kid!" Aster yelled to the others. "Now get that ratbag! OW! Kid, we're trying to help you!"
The ratbag in question was running towards the exit, clutching the slug to his chest. Alice started after him, running through the fountain to get to him before he escaped. This was not a man she was going to let get away.
"Kill them!" he roared to the two surviving guards as he ran by. "Kill them or I'll feed you both to the sharks!"
They both took aim at Alice, but before they could open fire, a multi-colored blur came flying down, her mouth opened in a savage war-cry and her Air Grabber primed for the kill. The Atlas guard yelled in fright as he tried to bring his shotgun to bear. Tooth's Grabber met his face before he could get a shot off, sending his body flying backwards into a wall. As his body slid down the wall, his shattered skull leaving a massive blood trail, the other guard turned towards the smaller woman, unable to believe his eyes. Before he could shoot her, Alice's hand cannon boomed and his head exploded in a wet cloud of grey and pink.
"He's getting away!" Tooth glanced down at her empty crossbow. "And I'm out of spare bolts!"
"He's not escaping." Reaching into storage, Alice pulled out her latest additions to her arsenal, something she had started working on since her last Wonderland dream. Tooth's eyes popped at the two enormous playing jacks that Alice telekinetically threw at the escaping man.
The sharpened ends of the jacks went in the backs of the man's knees and out the fronts, bringing him to ground, screaming in surprise and pain. Focusing on the points of the jack protruding from the man's knees, Alice grabbed them with her mind and drew him back, ignoring his screams the whole while. When he came to a stop in front of her and Tooth, he held the slug up, now just weakly squirming.
"Take it!" he begged. "Take it, the ADAM's all yours!"
Alice glowered down at him, her hand clenching as though the Vorpal Blade was begging her to use it.
"We don't want the damn ADAM, you drongo," Aster growled as he arrived at Tooth's side, the other Guardians right behind him. The man caught sight of the Little Sister somehow sleeping in North's arms.
"You wanted both the Little Sisters?" he managed to gasp out. "L-look, you've got skills, easily the best I've ever-ever seen," he continued to jabber as he painfully raised himself to a sitting position, "and I'm sure that Atlas would be willin' to…to let you have any Little Sisters you capture. What do you say? I doubt Ryan's payin' you that good."
He managed to smile up at them. He. Smiled.
That did it for Alice.
"If you think that for one moment we're only interested in the ADAM, you mammon-filled wretch," Alice growled out, her eyes flashing with anger, "you are more than tragically mistaken—you're a dead man." The hand cannon was out again, its barrel pressing against the man's forehead. "Send Fontaine our regards, would you kindly?"
"Wait," a soft, English-accented voice piped up behind them. The Guardians turned to find a pale man with blond, almost-white hair walking towards them. What drew their eyes was the body of the other Little Sister tenderly held in his arms, the wound in her stomach leaking blood all over his suit. He didn't appear to notice.
"My daughter went missing soon after the New Year's attack," he said, his eyes almost as dead as the little girl he held. "I searched everywhere for her. She was the last living member of my family, here and on the surface. Ryan fired me yesterday for 'using company resources without authorization' and I came here to think, and here she is. Dead."
He looked down at the little girl, who could be mistaken to be asleep if not for the cut in her belly and lack of breathing. A tear trickled down his face before his gaze locked onto the speaker; his tears fled away as a cold rage crept into his eyes, far colder than the little body in his arms. He held out one hand towards Alice.
"Let me," he said quietly.
Alice looked at him, then at his hand, her gun, and the man cowering at her feet.
"My father didn't get the chance to avenge my sister," she answered in the same tone. She flipped the gun in her hand, so that the father could take the Cannon by its handle. "All yours."
"What?" the man screamed. "Listen, take the kid, take the slug, take whatever you want! Just let me live, please!" He attempted to get into a begging position, only for Alice to telekinetically force him back down with the jacks. Crying in fear and pain, he looked up at the glowering Guardians, before turning to the mourning father. "Look, I-I'm sorry about your kid, but I was just followin' orders! I can make it up to you, I can give you whatever you want!" He nodded animatedly as though it was the best thing he had ever head. "You want it, you got it!"
The anger never once left the father's eyes as he cocked the gun's hammer and stuck it in the man's face, his face suddenly twisted by rage.
"I want Jane back!" he roared, pulling the trigger.
The blast from the gun was easily one of the loudest that Alice had ever heard, and the silence that followed the quietest.
The father gave the Hand Cannon back to Alice, and then knelt down, the little girl still cradled in his arms. He quietly began to sing a lullaby to her, rocking her little body gently. The Guardians looked down at the sorrowful scene and then prepared to leave. Ryan's security forces would be there soon.
Patching up the shoulder wound with a kit before it got worse, Alice looked back as they approached the exit. The scene was pure sorrow. The father was still mourning over his daughter, her face peaceful in death. The body of the Atlas speaker lay a few feet away, his head destroyed and the slug twitching in its last moments in his hands. Only in Rapture.
"I'll meet you all at the rendezvous point later," Alice called out to the Guardians. "There's something that I need to do first."
WOW. That got dark really fast. I think this is my most violent chapter yet. I was basically trying to match the level of violence we see in the games. Funny thing I noticed in my last BioShock playthrough: Blood tends to spray whenever anti-personnel ammo is used. Hmm, I wonder how the design of a "normal" bullet differs from that of a anti-personnel bullet? In real life that is. In a computer game, all you need is some lines of code.
I hope you all enjoyed this latest foray into the universe of WonderShock. Have a great day everyone, and happy writing!