Disclaimer: At last! My crack (or crack-head, as it sometimes appears to the casual observer) team of con men and charlatans has pulled it off, and I own the rights to the Bioshock franchise! [Disclaimer's Disclaimer: I do not nor will likely ever hold the rights to this marvelous franchise.] Anyways, back to the good stuff...
"Well, I hate to bring it up, but I know you're all thinking it. We have to plan for the possibility that Delta didn't make it out of the market and-"
The veteran of Rapture was cut off as Alice's pale fist, sans gauntlet for the first time in years, crashed onto the table, shaking the beaten wood with strength that defied her slight form.
"He's not dead," she, like a mantra. "He's not. We shouldn't be talking like he is."
The ghostly young woman had shed the Big Suit that had been her prison for years, changing into some of Becky's old clothes, which hung loose on her slim frame. She was free of the metal monstrosity which had imprisoned and sheltered her for the better part of the last decade, at least temporarily.
Carnegie shook his head slowly and mournfully, genuine sympathy in his stony face. "Alice, we all want for him to have made it, but the fact is we need to be ready if he didn't. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst, and if it is-"
A sudden pounding on the door silenced all conversation. Time seemed to freeze as every pair of eyes fixed on the battered wooden door to the apartment, and the knocking came a gain. In a heartbeat, Carnegie had scooped up his shotgun and crossed the distance to door, peering out the dirty peephole, only to let out a sigh of relief. With the speed of practiced skill, the man undid all five of the rusty locks newly affixed to the door, and allowed the wooden portal to swing open.
Standing there in the doorway was Subject Delta, blood, grease, and soot clinging to his once pristine brass armor, its plates scarred and beaten. With a grunt, the original Big Daddy shrugged and readjusted the massive load slung over one shoulder, and with a near silent gasp, Alice recognized it as the Alpha which had attacked them. The Alpha that had almost taken away her Daddy. Carnegie wasted no time in leveling the barrel of the gun at the limp Big Daddy's porthole. Delta gave a grumble of protests, muffled by his helmet and sheer exhaustion. Thankfully, the radio in his suit crackled to life, and Tenenbaum's voice poured out in a burst of static.
"Michael," she started, "thank God Herr Delta has reached you. This is Herr Sigma, an ally I had feared lost. He has been operating in Minerva's Den on the other side of the city, and when I'd lost contact with him, I had feared the worst. "
Carnegie eyed the battered bundle of man and machine. "Go on," he intoned, an edge creeping into his voice as he eyed Sigma suspiciously.
Tenenbaum sighed and continued. "He was an...agent," she said with resignation, lacking a better term. "As part of a deal I made to gain assistance in escaping this place, I performed a similar process on him as I had done to Herr Delta, freeing his mind so that he could aid us. He was to retrieve vital data from Minerva's Den, and return to me."
"Well I take it that didn't happen," Carnegie retorted, finally lowering his gun. He shook his head. "Doc they're both in pretty bad shape, I don't know what you want me to do for 'em."
"Patch them up as good as you are able to. I can finish repairs here at the Atlantic Express. When you are finished and they can travel, you should all come here, so that we may pool our resources."
Carnegie mulled this over silently, moving out of the hallway and gesturing for Delta to enter. The Big Daddy struggled under a step forward, only to falter and drop to one knee, hard. The massive thump that accompanied his fall shook the moldering floor boards and rusty framework of the apartment before him, and Alice heard the tinkling of broken glass as framed pictures fell from their shelf. With a groan, the Big Daddy lugged himself back upright, readjusting the leaden weight of Sigma across his back.
"Alright Doc that I'll have to think on that one, but right now we'll get these two buckets of bolts back in working order. Billy, give me a hand here. Amir, get the workshop ready."
With that, the rest of the Rapture survivors fell into preordained roles, leaving Alice alone at the table, her mind reeling at what was going on. Amir and Becky had dashed off to some unknown room, from whence the clangs of banging metal and whir of machinery was soon emanating. Gloria Parson had bustled into the kitchen, and seemed to be fishing out glass bottles of all shapes and sizes with peeling labels, alcohol for antiseptic. Meanwhile, Billy and Carnegie himself were struggling to assist the lumbering behemoth that was Delta into the workshop. Alice watched dumbstruck as Daddy plodded forward, blood and oil dripping out of his armor, as a wild new notion struck her; Delta was merely mortal.
For the entirety of her brief bout of true consciousness, the former Big Sister's very world had been founded upon the principle that this man of flesh and steel was her infallible Protector, a great unconquerable bastion to shelter her, just as the memories of her ADAM muddled childhood remembered. Yet the creature before her was not her knight in shining armor, no righteous indomitable champion. She knew not what to think of the battered form that passed by her. Mind spinning, the young woman backed away from the beaten Big Daddy, glass crunching under her feet. With a shocked stare, she let the two Rapturian monsters be led into the workshop, only then sparing a glance down at what she had stepped on.
Shards of glass and faux wood laid around the photograph of a woman and young boy, her hands affectionately on his shoulders, with trees and grass in the background. Kind eyes looked out from the woman's delicate face and a bob of dark hair, leading down to a simple housedress which hung elegantly on her. The little boy beamed, his front tooth missing and grass stains on his jeans. Alice carefully flipped the photo over, and in curt, slanted handwriting a message was scrawled; Nina and Donnie, Arcadia. The date proclaimed was nearly a decade ago.
The gruff noise of someone clearing their throat snapped Alice's attention back to front and center, and she looked up to find Carnegie standing over her, his gaze as cold as humanely possible.
"The picture, please," he intoned, and the young woman could feel the emotion held behind the stony face. Wordlessly, she handed it over, and could only watch as the man reverently slipped it into a shirt pocket and disappear into the recesses of the apartment, leaving her to only wonder at the photo's importance to him.
The two Big Daddies had been laid out side to side, Delta having finally slipped into unconsciousness. Amir carefully cracked each knuckle and his neck before slipping into a relatively clean pair of scrubs liberated from the Medical District years ago. A surgical mask was slipped over his fine-boned features , and gloves sat nearby, along with a tool belt filled with everything from screwdrivers to clamps to steel wool. A bucket of home brewed antiseptic sat with rags soaking in it, and threadbare towels and rags were laid out beneath the two Alpha Series. He anticipated things were going to get messy. The corpses of stripped Vending Machines, Turrets, and Rapture tech of all that usually littered his "workshop" had been brushed aside, and the jury-rigged lamps overhead had been coaxed into shining.
"Well," the young man muttered to himself, the faintest trace of his parents' accents present, "time to get to work."
Jack Ryan sat at the Formica counter of his home, Eleanor Lamb next to him, a mug of steaming earl grey tea in hand. The churning murky Hudson had performed admirably once again, and the bodies of the three Spetsnaz operatives he had returned home to find on his floors were gone, stripped of their valuables before being dumped in the river. Tears stained the young woman's face; the last few days had strained her to breaking point. Jack sighed and took a swig of his beer; the cheap swill was near tasteless going down, but after all that had happened, he needed a drink. The old Booze Hound Tonic let him process alcohol with inhuman efficiency helped him from getting completely senseless though.
Eleanor sniffled slightly. Her tears had long since dried. For all his experience with teenage girls, he was raising five of them after all, Jack Ryan found himself at a loss of what to do. None of his daughters had ever mercilessly butchered three men, then been crushed by conscience. It was a dilemma he chose to answer with more beer. If nothing else though, Rapture had instilled within him a sense of practicality, and so with a final gulp he emptied the bottle and turned to face the girl.
Eleanor's eyes were still puffy and red from tears as she gazed at Jack Ryan's haggard face. Incarceration by agents of the KGB had not been kind to him. Finally, he spoke.
"You did the right thing."
Eleanor glared at him, incredulously."Do you have any idea what it feels like to-"
"Yes, yes I do. And before you go on beating yourself up about this, we both know that those men would've killed everyone in this house without a second thought. So don't you think for a second that what you did wasn't justified."
Eleanor could only gape at him as she struggled to keep her voice down.
"How can you say that? How can you just, just brush this off, dump them in the river like junk and carry on like nothing's happened?" she demanded, voice harsh.
"Because I have something to fight for," Jack answered simply, nodding his head towards the stairs. "Taking a genuine human life is a terrible thing and nothing changes that, but when push comes to shove and its either them or my girls up there dying, I'd kill them without hesitation."
"So that's just it then," Eleanor spat, "you'd butcher anyone who threatens you?"
Jack shook his head, pushing the empty bottle away from him as he turned to better face the young woman. "My life ain't worth shit. I made my peace with that a long time ago. Rapure made sure of that."
"What do you mean?" his companion asked tentatively. With a sigh, Jack answered.
"Fontaine and Suchong played Dr. Frankenstein and cooked me up in a lab. Tenenbaum doesn't know how long I'll hold together." He shook his head wistfully, voice sharpening. "One of these days, I'm just gonna' start falling apart. Organ failure, mental breakdown; she doesn't know what or when, only that it's going to happen. So until then, I fight, I slave to keep things together, to make a better life for them."
Eleanor was silent. A million thoughts played through her mind, but above them all was guilt. Guilt not aimed at the men she had killed, but at the man before her. Guilt that she had ever questioned him, and that she had teased old pain back up to the surface of his tortured soul. She moved to apologize, but once again, Jack beat her to it.
"Hey, I'm sorry, kid," he said with a sigh, "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. Go back to bed, you look exhausted."
Words dying in her throat, Eleanor could simply nod and started towards the stairs. She couldn't bring herself to make eye contact.
"Eleanor," Jack's voice came, softer this time. "Thank you. You saved my girls' lives tonight. Keep that in mind."
In silent misery, Eleanor Lamb ascended the stairs of the Ryan house and returned to a fitful sleep, nightmares of Rapture haunting her.
oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo ooooooooooo ooooooooooo ooooooooooo oooooooooooooo
Whistling a tuneless song, Orrin Oscar Lutwidge surveyed his surroundings with a mad glint in his eye. Poor little Pawn gave up the address almost too easy, he thought to himself with a giggle. The door had been easy enough to pick, and the madman found himself in the dingy rooms of his Pawn's humble abode. His new toys from his skirmish with the Russians were tucked safely within the depths of his trench coat, the AK-47 strapped across his back. With a skip in his step he browsed the apartment, a grin spreading across his face when he found it.
"Curiouser and curiouser," he said to himself, a lopsided smile spreading across his mottled face to reveal rotten teeth. He traced the lines of yarn between pictures and newspaper clippings, grinning all the way until he found the one he was looking for.
"Oh Mr. Ryan," he hissed, "You, your happy little family, and I are going to have so much fun."
End Chapter. Sorry for the delays folks. Reality must take precedence over fiction however. Please Review