Having to go the Little Sister's Orphanage was bad enough.
The path to get there was even worse.
Jack didn't know who the hell Sofia Lamb was, but he knew enough about her to know that she was bad news. She'd apparently turned many children into monsters. Tenenbaum was very eager to stop her; apparently the two had bad blood. Now Lamb was claiming that she "held the key to Rapture's survival". Jack was no fool. He knew Rapture was doomed. It was doomed from its creation. Like himself.
Elizabeth gazed over his shoulder uncertainly at the radio. "Um…Jack, shouldn't we get going…?"
Jack nodded. "Yeah…in…in a minute, okay?" He sighed. "I need some time."
"Jack, there is no time. We have to go."
Jack didn't respond. He simply fingered the radio's power button, waiting to see if Anna would speak again. He was lost in thought, so he didn't notice when Elizabeth started to sing.
She left his side and started scavenging for supplies. She started to hum, softly at first, but the farther she got away from Jack, the louder she became.
Jack recognized the song she was humming as the one they'd heard on the radio, and begun to hum along. Elizabeth looked up from the First-Aid kit she was putting together and narrowed her eyes at him. "You know this song?" she asked, suspicious.
Jack shook his head. "Can't say that I do, ma'am. Would you like to teach me? "
Elizabeth rolled her eyes at the formal title given to her and refocused her efforts on assembling a First-Aid kit. She had antiseptic, bandages, alcohol, a needle, scissors, and thread. All she needed now was…
Oh, shit.
Now she just needed some tweezers. Well, there had to be a pair somewhere around here, right?
Right.
Elizabeth headed over to Jack, who was still thumbing the radio. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked irritably, slamming the makeshift emergency kit on the nearby nightstand.
Jack jumped, clearly startled by the noise. He stiffened. "Well—"
"Don't," Elizabeth snapped, snatching the radio from his hands. She threw it into the duffel bag that she'd prepared and glared menacingly at Jack before heading off to find tweezers.
Jack cocked his head to the side curiously. "What?"
"Don't talk to me. I'm mad at you."
"Why?"
Elizabeth huffed and turned to him, crossing her arms. "You didn't tell me we had a murderous psychopath on our heels." She pursed her lips.
Jack groaned. "Oh my God. Okay, I didn't think you would be that…"
"Useful? Able to handle myself? Competent?"
"Uh…interested?" Jack tried.
Elizabeth threw up her hands, exasperated. "Interested! Well, of course I would be! I mean, we could have died, and it would be all your fault!"
"Oh, shut up. Geez, take a breather, will you?" he muttered.
Elizabeth reddened, Jack realized, from anger. "You take a breather!" she blurted in frustration.
Jack's eyes widened in surprise. "Well, excuse me, your royal pain in the ass, but I didn't sign up for this."
Elizabeth's face flushed. "Well neither did I!"
Jack rolled his eyes and turned his back to her. "Yeah, whatever."
Elizabeth growled in frustration and turned on her heels. Jack raised his hands in defense. "Hey just trying to—"
"I don't really give a damn. Shut up and stop, you damn flirt."
Jack pursed his lips. "I am not flirting with you."
Elizabeth scoffed. "Yeah. Sure. Maybe you should take me dancing," she replied sarcastically, rummaging around in the cabinet for supplies.
Jack folded his arms and glared profoundly at her. "I don't know how to dance. Are you kidding me?"
Elizabeth whirled around to face him. "You're joking….and you're not. My God, you need help."
"So I've been told."
"If we ever get out of here, you're taking me dancing, and I'll teach you. There. End of discussion." She slammed the cabinet shut, finding nothing of interest inside, and stood up, smoothing her skirt. She headed over to a desk, opened a drawer, and shifted the contents until she had found what she was looking for. She pulled her hair together into a ponytail and leaned down to tie her boots.
Jack just stared, confused. Did a cold-hearted girl just offer to teach him to dance? He was going crazy.
A man's Tennessee accented voice buzzed out of the speaker of the radio. "Hellooooooo, Brigdy! You there, sweetcakes? I got a bit of a problem here….someone killed lil' Eleanor, who was supposedly the vessel for Lamb's crazy plan. Damnit, Lamb's gonna be pissed….."
"I'm sorry. Who the hell—" Elizabeth started, but Jack cut her off.
"Sinclair—"
"Heey, Jack! Where's Bridge? Don't tell me—taking care of the Sisters, right?" The man chuckled. "I tell ya, that woman is gonna make a fine mother someday. Just you wait an' see."
Jack rolled his eyes. "I swear—"
"Now, Jack….I understand we need to find this Anna. But, um…there, a, ah, problem. You see, the kid is kind of not the problem here. You see this is a trap, set by Lamb. She's found a way to implant ADAM—"
The radio cut off. Jack scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion. "Uh…"
Elizabeth, meanwhile, was trying to regain the connection. She carefully took apart the radio, and began to rearrange the wires. Jack looked over her shoulder.
"What are you doing, Liz?"
Elizabeth grunted, shrugging Jack off. "I'm trying to fix this damn thing, you moron."
Jack scrunched up his nose, clearly annoyed. "Hey, just trying to help here. You're not very nice."
"I'm not trying to make friends here, Jack. I'm trying to survive. You should try to do the same."
The radio buzzed to life.
"Where'd you guys go?" Sinclair asked.
Jack groaned. "Listen, Sinclair.…we have more pressing issues right now. One of the Little Sisters, Anna, is heading to Lamb's office right now. If she gets a hold of her—"
"Bad things are gonna happen." Sinclair muttered something inaudible over the radio and shuffled some things around. "Well, if we're gonna get out of this one, we're gonna need to weigh our options here. What's the quickest way to Lamb's office?"
"Through Inner Persephone," Elizabeth volunteered.
"Ah, yes, hello to you too. Now, about Anna—"
"Yeah—"
"We're gonna need someone to go and get the little tyke."
"I volunteer the four-year old!" Elizabeth offered, elbowing Jack with a playful grin on her face.
"Hey!" Jack whined.
"See? He doesn't mind," Elizabeth said, her grin growing broader.
Jack pushed her, and she kicked him in response.
"Ow!" he groaned.
"I swear, you two fight like an old married couple," Sinclair remarked.
"Hey!" Elizabeth complained.
"How are we going to get to Anna? Lamb protects her stuff very well," Jack noted.
A loud noise emitted from the other end, like someone shuffling papers. "Uh…let's see here…we got…ooo, that's not good."
"What?"
"Listen, you'd better head to Inner Persephone now. She's almost there." Sinclair hung up.
Jack whistled. "Well, looks like it's you and me. Let's get started."
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Anna stepped over a dead Splicer and made her way over to the Little Sister's Orphanage. She shuddered as the dead body twitched a bit. "Gross…"
She tripped over another dead Splicer. "Ah!"
Blood smeared on her dress. She tried wiping it off, only resulting in even further dirtying of her dress and blood-covered hands. Sighing, she trudged on, hopping over dead bodies and avoiding Splicers and Big Daddies. Perhaps what worried her even more was the fact that Adam was probably looking for her; and she didn't want to be found. Couldn't he understand that?
Apparently not. Her radio buzzed, and thinking it was Lamb, Anna picked it up.
"I'm almost there. Just a couple more seconds—"
"Listen well, Miss Comstock. I know who you really are. Did you think you could deceive me? I did not pay Atlas to bring me Anna DeWitt just so you could snatch her away! She has a destiny; one that you cannot share. None of you will make it out alive, I promise."
Anna was about to respond when suddenly she felt a sharp, skull-shattering pain in her head. "AAAAHHH!" she screamed, dropping the radio. She grabbed her head, falling to the floor in a fetal position.
"Now we've upset her."
"I don't suppose this next bit will do much for her mood."
Anna looked up. Those two again….
"I hate Irish people," she muttered as she picked herself up off of the ground. She wiped her wet head with her hand and was startled when it came away red. "What the…"
"We're British," said the lady in an annoyed sort of voice.
Anna rolled her eyes. "So?"
"You're rude," the gentleman complained.
"I don't care. I really don't. I just want to get out of here!" Anna yelled.
"That escalated quickly."
"And go where?" the lady asked, ignoring her twin brother. "It's been two years since you came here."
Anna felt her nose start to bleed again and held up her hand to her nostrils. "Four years? No. It—It can't be…" Her vision flashed red and she saw…a tower, shaped like an angel….and…was that a giant metal bird flying to her window?…. Her vision faded, and she heard herself ask, "Where is that place?"
"Not where," the man said.
"When," the lady corrected.
"What? Who are—"Anna began, but they were already gone. "Of course." She sighed and kicked up dust. She thought about what she'd envisioned. A metal bird and an angel tower? She was going crazy.
She picked up the radio from the floor. "Hello?"
"Ah, Anna! I was starting to get worried…Are you almost there?"
Another vision flashed before her eyes, this one depicting a floating city, burning one second, then completely untouched the next. Anna stumbled, and tripped over a dead Spider Splicer as a small voice in her head whispered….
"Anna? What's going on? I can barely hear you, child, is everything alright?"
"No. No, everything's not alright." Anna was practically crying now, though she tried her best to hide it. "And my name isn't Anna, Ms. Lamb."
"It's not?" Lamb asked calmly, clearly amused. "Well, then, child, what is your name?"
"I…" Anna faltered. "I don't know, ma'am. But it's not Anna. I don't belong here—"
"What makes you say that?" Lamb asked.
Anna didn't respond to her question; she simply turned off her radio and smashed it against the ground. She looked down at her dress. "I suppose I should change," she mumbled. She focused on concentrating her energy towards opening up a tear. A few seconds into it, she heard a warp! And there was a tear, showing the tower that she'd seen in her "dream". She thought about opening it, but she thought better of it. She quickly closed the tear before she could change her mind and ran down the long, winding tunnels of Rapture, not stopping until she nearly fainted. She didn't know where she was going, what she was doing, or who she even was. But her story, it would seem, was being put together. Talking to those two must have triggered something inside her head, something that was supposed to be gone, nonexistent, erased. But for some reason, it hadn't been done properly, and this was the result. Anna figured it was some sort of memory crisis; but if so, why here? Why now? None of this made sense—it was all jumbled together, like jigsaw puzzle pieces from a thousand different puzzles were thrown together.
One thing stood out, however. In the midst of all the confusion, that one part, that one, small, insignificant part stood out, among all of things she'd seen in that dream. That girl was important…somehow.
"Booker, she's going to kill that child! We have to do something!"
A girl, about nineteen years old, stood, looking down at the blood-stained body of the African-American woman she had just killed. Her tattered sailor's dress was splattered with fresh blood, and her eyes looked in horror at the bloody scissors in her hand. Her face was dotted with specks of blood and dirt. Her eyes took in all of this, and Anna felt herself stepping towards this strange person.
The girl set her eyes on Anna and stepped back, gasping. Her sky-blue eyes were wide with horror and guilt as she realized what she had just done.
"Elizabeth…" she heard a man say. Booker?
"I guess it runs in the family." The girl, supposedly Elizabeth, turned and ran away.
The man followed her shortly after.
Anna stood, speechless. She thought she'd seen that girl's face before…but she hadn't, had she?
No…..
Anna woke up, weary and cold, to a flashlight shining in her face. "What the hell?" she grunted angrily, swatting it away.
"Hey!" a voice chastised. Jack. "Don't use that kind of language. How are you doing?"
"She's alive, Jack. I think that's more than we can say for the rest of them. S=Leave her alone—Mary, get that damn flashlight out of her face!" Elizabeth scolded.
A blond girl of about four shut the flashlight off, and it took Anna a moment to adjust to the light.
"Sorry," the child squeaked, running off.
Another person was there, one Anna did not recognize. His black hair was slicked back, he wore suspenders, and he was speaking to Tenenbaum with a flirty expression on his face.
"Who's that?" she asked Elizabeth, pointing to him.
"That's Sinclair," she said, without looking at him. "He's apparently a friend of both Jack's and Brigid's."
"Oh." Anna fumbled with the skirts of her bloodstained bluebell dress. "Uh, I have a question to ask you?"
"Sure. Fire away," Elizabeth said, not taking her eyes off of her work (which appeared to be a code).
"What happened to your pinky?"
Elizabeth stopped what she was doing at once and looked Anna straight in the eye. "Don't ask again."
Anna cringed. "Sorry. Just curious, I guess."
Elizabeth seemed to accept that and went back to her code-breaking. "Why don't you get some sleep?"
"No!" Anna said at once.
Elizabeth looked at her. "What? Why not?"
No way was she going to tell Elizabeth that she as having hallucinations in her sleep. "Uh…I'm not tired. Can I stay up?"
"Hmph." Elizabeth eyed her suspiciously but said nothing. Instead she fingered her pendant, which caught Anna's eye.
"Where did you get that?" Anna asked.
"My father chose it for me." She said no more on the matter.
Anna's head was spinning like a top. First she wakes up in a crazy-ass place filled with roving maniacs, and now she starts having hallucinations in her sleep (and about another person's past, no less)? Talk about survival of the fittest. It looked like the freaking apocalypse from her point of view.
"I'm going crazy," she muttered.
"Maybe you're just tired," Jack suggested. "Get some rest."
"Whatever I do, I am not going back to sleep." Anna folded her arms across her chest resolutely and jumped out of her bed to go play with the other kids in Tenebaum's safe-house.
