Disclaimer: Yah don't own it, sad as it may be. Anyways, my apologies for the update gap. I've a number of other projects running concurrently right now. But let's not dwell on that, shall we? Thanks to all my reviewers. Please keep up the feedback. And to all those who haven't reviewed; Would you kindly take a few moments of your time after reading to do so? It helps me make this story better for you guys. But enough with that. On to the good stuff! Guess who our special guest star this chapter is, little moth. I hope I've done you all proud.
The screams and twisted poetry of the Creepers rattled through the maintenance chambers as the two Alpha series desperately sought a way out, the rumble and groan of ancient machinery reawakening all but drowning them out. The return of the lights had frenzied the monsters, the twisted ghosts of the finest men and women of a generation, the wretched husks who clung to the dark embrace of their shadows. Only now their haven was no more, and the beasts, blind and pale as moonlight, strangers and fearers of the burning light, sought blood to ease their pain.
A Creeper came screaming around a narrow corner, howling and hissing and spitting madly as it struggled to find its prey, but amidst the rumblings and groaning of the machines, their keen ears were no use. Slashing the air with bloodstained claws, its eyeless face a twisted grimace showing off jagged teeth, the Splicer was floored by a savage backhand from Delta. With a roar, the Big Daddy thrust his whirling drill into the creature's mottled chest, and a spray of flesh, blood, and the tattered rags the Splicer wore was splattered against the wall. Kicking the body out of the way, the Alphas charged onwards. Turn after turn after turn, the tunnels sprawled onwards, until, at last, they came upon their salvation; a freight elevator. Rusty and decrepit as it was, the machine seemed functional, and scrunching together on the narrow platform, Sigma pulled the lever, and with a groan the elevator began its ascent. It groaned a fraction too loud though, for no sooner had they begun the short climb when a pair of Creepers rounded the bend, strands of putrid spittle dribbling from cruel, twisted mouths, with colorless flesh peeking out everywhere from beneath their tattered clothes, the pitiful remains of what had once been theatre finery. The two Big Daddies wasted no time.
With a flick of the wrist, honeycombs sprouted along Delta's palm and fingers, and their stinging inhabitants quickly wriggled free of their waxy prisons. The clouds of insects swarmed their foes, stinging and biting as their victims helplessly swiped and screamed at their tiny attackers. A volley of white hot rivets flew from Sigma's gun, silencing their cries with the sizzle and pop of burn flesh. The elevator continued its slow climb. Delta gritted his teeth, and loaded in new buckshot; if their fellows in the tunnels were anything to judge by, the Creepers would have a grisly welcome waiting for them topside.
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Smartly dressed in a nondescript suit with tinted glasses, the interrogator exited the tent, cracking his neck and running calloused fingers through graying hair before heading over to the command tent. The moment he entered, all eyes were upon him, shifting from a table laden with reports and maps to his face in a heartbeat. The assorted military officers greeted him with crisp salutes, which he returned, before they quickly turned tail and exited the tent with a glint in their eyes and a gait in their step that could have been the barest beginnings of fear. Alone, the man in the suit took a seat and picked up the military issue telephone; the boys had gotten a secure line to HQ set up in near record time. After a few moments of silence, there was an answer, and the man began.
"Yes sir, the prisoner has proven quite...pliable. Gave me names, locations, but I know he's holding more back. Give me a little more time with him and we'll have-what? When?" In an instance, the agent's facade of calm cool and collected melted away, anger seeping into his country drawl. He shook his head and gritted his teeth. "Damn him, damn him to hell! He's already mobilized the strike team? That boy," he spat, "is using a national security crisis to make a power play. We haven't even finished tracking down the," his superior cut him off, and the man's voice faltered for a moment, but he continued. "I, yes sir, I realize this is my responsibility. No sir, it won't happen again."
He sighed, rubbing his temples. "Yes sir, we have enough information to move on the targets. The prisoner has provided us with names and known aliases for both, and an address for one of them." The agent swallowed, hard. "Yes sir. We move on Jack Ryan within the hour."
Hanging up the phone, the agent wiped a bead of cold sweat from his brow, and took a moment to compose himself, recovering from what could have been the barest beginnings of fear.
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With a groan, Eleanor blinked thrice, and her vision began to return. Her head ached, ached terribly, and she tried to sit up, only for a rough hand to push her, gently, back down. She became aware of the cushions beneath her, and wondered where she was, as the figure standing over her began to sharpen into clarity. It was Jack, his mouth drawn tight, eyes ablaze.
"What happened?" he demanded, through clenched teeth, with a fury she had never seen.
"I, I don't, I can't," she stuttered, trying, desperately trying to understand how she had ended up here. And then she remembered.
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The door had rang, again, and thinking their visitor just as harmless as the last, she had offered to answer it, while Jack's daughters had busied themselves washing and feeding the little girls. Like a fool, she had opened the door without even bothering to look through the peephole. The wooden portal swung open, and a scrappy man with a face like a Splicer and a raggedy trench coat stood before her. A look of bemusement seemed to cross his face.
"You're not on my list, my sweet," he said to her with a grotesque smile, his voice nauseating, sugary sweet. His grin twisted into a snarl. "Poor you!"
In the blink of an eye, the man had a length of heavy pipe in his hand, and the next second it was swinging towards her. She screamed, and moved to stop it, but to no avail. With a crunch, the bludgeon connected with her temple, and then there was nothing but blackness. The rest was like a dream, brief, fleeting lapses into and out of consciousness. There were screams, crashes, and tears, and she wanted to move, wanted to get up, but all she could do was lay there on the entry hall floor, in a puddle of her own blood, and stare up at the ceiling. She would she shadows, hear the groan of the wooden floor, but the man was gone from her vision until the very end. At last he reappeared, Masha slung over his shoulder, limp, like a sack of grain. He smiled devilishly at her.
"You're a tenacious one, aren't you," he told her, chidingly. "We'll have to break you of that habit." This time it was slow, agonizingly slow, and still there was nothing she could do. The man dropped Masha, and kicked the door shut before producing a long, gleaming knife from the folds of his trench coat. With gusto, he tied a bow of crimson ribbon about it, a note written on cardstock tied to that. "Send my regards to Mr. Ryan, my dear." The knife slashed downwards, a searing pain tore through her belly, and then the blackness returned.
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She told all of this to Jack, who sat, fuming. When she was done, he spoke.
"You we're lying in the hallway when I got back, whole floor soaked in blood. Part of you skull was caved in, and you had this," he held up the now crimson knife with its festive decor, "stuck to the hilt in your stomach. If it wasn't for that healing factor the ADAM slugs give you, you'd be dead."
Eleanor was at a loss for words. He tongue felt as lead in her mouth, her lips numb and useless. "What, what about the others?" she finally asked.
Jack clenched his jaw. "The little girls are safe. They were," he faltered for a moment, "they were tied up, and scared to death, but unharmed."
Eleanor saw the pain in his eyes, and she knew without asking what had happened.
"They're gone, aren't they?" she asked, softly.
Jack could only nod, hot tears snaking down his rage contorted face.
"All five," he growled, through anger, sorrow, and fury. "He took all of them."
With a groan, Eleanor forced herself to sit up, only for sharp pains to shoot through her skull and stomach. Suddenly she became aware of the thick bandages wrapped around those parts. She turned to face Jack, whose eyes were glued to the note that had been attached to the knife. "Why?" she asked, simply. "Who would do this?"
Roughly, the man shoved the paper into her hands, and stormed towards the basement, where she knew he kept his things from Rapture. She scanned the paper quickly.
Come alone, and leave your toys at home, else your beauties will make pretty corpses.
The message was scrawled in a wild, almost childish handwriting, with an address in the dockyards hastily added in below. She shuddered at the sight of the knife, at the thought that its long, curving blade had been stuck in her stomach. Jack returned a minute later, with a pistol and a red, scratched wrench tucked into his belt. "What are you going to do?" she asked, the near manic glint in his eye terrifying.
He turned, and face her calmly. "You stay here with the little girls," he commanded, his face darkening , "I'm going to get my daughters back."
With that, Jack Ryan plucked the note with the address from her hands, and stormed out the door, leaving the girl to fear for the future. She wished she could do more, and tried to rise, only for a searing pain to burn through her head.
When the agony faded, she resigned herself to sitting on the couch for the time being, and thinking about what had happened, about Jack and his family. About the fury she had seen behind his eyes. For all the differences between the two men, she could not help but think of her own Father, and his trials to reach her. As she sat here, battered and bloodied, she could not help but wonder if she had done the right thing, if all the pain and suffering she had caused was worth it. To look back on all the death and destruction she had caused in her pursuit of freedom, the lives lost, the torment she went through, that Father went through; all of it only seemed to give credence to her mother's teachings. The evils of the self, and self-serving actions that Sofia Lamb had decried had been proven by her own daughter. Seeing Jack's torment only served to drive the point home, and she could only wonder how much pain she had but her own Father through. All of his agony, all of his pain, his rage, all of it was because of her. Her fault. Her greed, her selfishness, was what had put the person she loved most in the world through hell. It may have even killed him. And yet despite it all, she still yearned to see him, to hug him and be held, for him to protect her, and for that she despised herself. With a shudder, Eleanor felt tears begin to run down her cheeks, and she prayed to whatever god above that would listen that her Father found his peace. Even if it was without her.
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With a spasm of pain, Delta slumped against his comrade as the elevator continued its agonizingly slow ascent, and Sigma hurried to catch him, grunting in what could have been annoyance or concern. The familiar pains wracked his body, his vision tinged red and pink, and the metal man fought through it to seize the last of the special hypos Tenenbaum had brewed for him and inject it. A few seconds later, the attack stopped, and breathing heavily, the Big Daddy stood by his own power once more, letting the hypo fall away and shatter. Sigma's porthole was as blank and expressionless as his own, but he liked to think that there was concern beneath it, which he brushed off. Looking up, the end of the shaft was in sight, as the doors that topped it folded open and let the lights and sounds of mayhem greeted them.
Creepers screamed and clawed and fought. Machines grumbled to life and lights crackled. But above all of it, drowning out all other sounds, was the music. The haunting tones of a long dead orchestra, captured forever on vinyl, blared out from speakers, the voices of the strings, horns, and percussion both enchanting and horrifying. At long last, the elevator reached its destination, and the two Big Daddies stepped off to survey their surroundings. The room was wide, and round, filled with shuttered and barred storefronts and theaters, and with a central staircase dominating its middle immediately in front of them. A balcony ringed around it on the second floor, doubtless holding more of the same. What commanded the twin Alpha series' attention though was the horror they beheld next to them.
They were no strangers to the grotesque plastered bodies posed about the district, but the display alongside the elevator put them all to shame. Over half a dozen of them unfortunate souls had been doused in plaster, with masquerade rabbit masks glued to their faces, posed in such a way as to serve as holders for four oversized pictures, each more grisly than the last.
A charred, battered corpse laid out on a stage, with the shattered remains of a spotlight and a piano bench alongside him. A masked man sat slumped against an icy wall, his blood dark on the pale frost. The pictures were horrifying, dark tableaus of death put high on a pedestal for all to see.
Having had enough of the morbid display, Delta stepped down from the stage they had been brought to, and Sigma followed. Spotting the door labeled Transportation on the far side of the room, the metal man hurried that way, with Sigma hot on his heels, hoping to escape this place before the Creepers took notice of them again. It was not to be.
With a earsplitting screech, rusted steel blast doors slid down like the blade of some giant guillotine, cutting of any hope they had of escape. Delta reeled away from the steel as it crashed downwards ,only to watch as one by one, every other door in the great central chamber met a similar fate. With a sudden burst of static, the music was cut off, replaced by the voice of a madman.
"What have we here," it hissed over the speakers, the voice a soft rasp. It quavered and tittered wildly, like the Creepers with their dark whispers. "Two little rats, caught in a trap, hmm?"
Delta was at once reminded of the insane babblings of Gil Alexander, Lamb's first, failed, 'Utopian'. Both of these men, for it was almost certainly a man, bore the mark of intense ADAM sickness. The crazed voice, so soft and smooth, yet so utterly mad, continued on.
"Do you know what we do to rats," he started, voice like silken noose, inviting yet repulsive. "We crush them!" His ultimatum screamed, the man faded out with a burst of giggles, and the music returned. So did the Creepers.
Calling out their forlorn rhymes and verses, the blind, clawed demons burst out from shuttered storefronts and holes in the wall, crawling on walls and ceilings like Spider Splicers with their hooked talons and wiry strength. They had no shadows to hide in this time, and it seemed the creatures knew that as much as their intended victims did. As soon as the Big Daddies were within reach, the monsters howled and screamed, peeling back papery lips to show their jagged, rotten teeth, and pounced.
The music blared as the Splicers screamed. Delta's first attacker was skewered with a harpoon mid leap, the spear piercing its belly as it screamed. A half second later the rockets on its end ignited, sending the unwilling passenger on a wild flight before the projectile exploded with a basso boom to rival the orchestra's drums, and gobbets of flaming flesh rained down. The Big Daddy grunted with satisfaction and turned to face his next opponent, loading in a regular harpoon to conserve ammo, when a blur of rags and claws took him from the side, knocking him to the ground and pinning him as grisly talons raked his chest. Roaring in fury, the metal man struggled and flailed as the violins lamented some unspoken tragedy, but with the awkward angle he was trapped at the beast was impossible to dislodge. Through the bloodied glass of his porthole he could see the Creeper's lumpy, eyeless face, its smile spread in a wide grin. A heartbeat and a shotgun blast later, it was mess of bloody pulp and white bone, and the Splicer went limp on top of him.
Grunting, the Big Daddy hauled himself to his feet with Sigma's help, before loosing a spear at a Creeper behind his savior who seemed intent on using the same tactic as his own attacker. The harpoon shot through the monster's neck with a spray of blood, and the creature clawed pitifully at with as it gurgled and gasped and choked to death on its own blood.
Still the slaughter continued, Daddy and Splicer dancing across the floor to the music of masters long dead. Ballets, waltzes, and scherzos blared as Creepers died screaming, impaled, ignited, and riddled with bullets. Yet still they came.
A pair of the beasts scampered by the stage that the Alphas had arrived on, with its dark display, and without a second thought Sigma fired a rocket towards them. The explosion ripped the Creepers to shreds, and blasted the plastered picture holders to pieces. The music broke away in a burst of static, and the voice returned with a vengeance.
"What have you done!" it screamed, with a hiss like nails on a chalkboard. "Vandals! Philistines! Doubters!" the madman roared. "My masterpiece, my Quadtych. It's ruined! My legacy, burnt to ashes!"
As the madman shouted, the battle raged on. "He sent you," the man hissed over the speakers as Delta smashed a Creeper's head into the railing of the great staircase in the chamber's center. "He sent you to finish the job, didn't he? Didn't he?" The man broke down into a flurry of gurgling gasps that could have been rage, sorrow, or both. "I led him through the magic of my domain," he lamented, as Sigma blasted Creepers with his laser, "the enchantments of Fort Frolic, opened my home to him. And how does he repay me, my little moth? With a load of buckshot to the chest! Left me bleeding and clinging to life in my own damn kitchen!" The voice roared. "And now he doesn't even have the decency to finish the job himself?"
The man was screaming and cursing, and the attacks of the Creepers were beginning to taper off, the blind monsters crippled by light and chastised by losses. The twin Alphas gave them a parting gift of machine gun fire. Yet still the man ranted over the loudspeakers.
"He didn't kill me. Oh no, no no no no. He only made me stronger. I returned to the Fort, my home, my sanctuary, and grew strong. Grew strong in the beauty of the blackness, the perfection of darkness!" He was panting now, the silky smooth of his voice lost to feral growls. "The artist must subvert the senses, and how better than the pure, unsullied, absence of light?" He almost giggled. "Its perfect. Pure. Beautiful." The laughter turned to a roar. "But you've taken even that away. You ruin everything. Everything! Damned doubters!"
The last of the Creepers had fled, and the two Big Daddies stood back to back, looking about wildly for the man over the speakers, knowing an attack was on its way. There came a long pause, but at last the voice returned.
"I guess there's only one thing for it," the man said, his cool composure and silken tone recovered. "If you want something done right, best do it yourself."
With that the speakers cut out, and music returned, but of a different sort. Gone was the rich, full sound of the orchestra, replaced by a lone, mournful piano. It started soft, demure. A rolling trill of minor keys, up and down, up and down, until at last the came a sharper note and the song roared to life in a true crescendo. It was then that the man made his appearance.
With a blood red cloud of smoke like any Houdini Splicer, the voice's owner appeared at the top of the stairs, but it became clear that this was no ordinary foe. No creature that ruled over the Creepers could be. He was tall and gaunt like his subjects, almost of height with the Big Daddies he faced, with long strong claws peeking out from tattered sleeves and trousers. The faded, shredded remains of a fine suit hung to his pale and elongated frame, but the worst of it all was his face. A mask hid the top half of his face, a rabbit mask with its upturned nose and long pointed ears, with seething, hate-filled orbs looking out through eyeholes.
"Do you know what you've done?" the man roared as his arms burst into flame, orbs of fire coalescing in his hands. "Do you know who I am?" With a flourish, he raised his arms up high and flung fireballs at his victims. "I'm Sander fucking Cohen, and I will not be judged by the likes of you!"
The twin Alphas dodged and ducked, and Delta caught one of the flaming projectiles in a telekinetic grip, but when his turned to return it to sender, the man was gone, disappeared in a puff crimson smoke. The piano played on, with roaring highs and whispering lows, trilling notes haunting and enthralling. The Big Daddies peered around the room for the telltale cloud of smoke that would mark their target's return. It came at last, but all too quickly. In the blink of an eye, Cohen was there and gone, a new volley of flaming death his parting gift.
And so it went. The music played, Cohen darted in and out of tangibility, raking his foes with claws and volleying them with fire, and the Big Daddies fought the hardest to get a hit in, but the man was a ghost. A babbling, foul mouthed ghost, whose words fought to be heard over the piano that echoed through the hall.
"Look at me, you rats!" he screamed, appearing upon the stage, atop the ruins of his masterpiece. "LOOK AT ME!"
He seemed to frequent the spot, Delta noted, in a corner of his mind detached from the battle. It was instinctive, the movements the combat, all second nature. He hauled out his launcher and loaded in a proximity mine, and Sigma seemed to get the hint. The mine whistled as it flew through the air, burying itself amongst the rubble and activating, and Sigma loaded a special power cell into his laser. Delta armed himself with his machine gun, and returned to their normal tactics. The trap had been set; now they needed bait. If this Cohen was goaded enough, he'd return to his familiar haunting grounds.
The dance of fire and bullets raged on, with the Alphas struggling to catch their prey. At last though, Cohen fell for it.
With gusto, he burst to existence atop the remains of his art. "I don't need any of you," he roared, "I am the master, the artist, the maestro of the soul and I-"
His tirade was cut off by an explosion from beneath him, throwing the madman onto his back. The Big Daddies wasted no time. Sigma pulled in the trigger on his laser, and the whole weapon began to glow and shake with energy. Delta rushed the stage, spear gun in one hand, hellfire in another.
Cohen scrambled to his feet in a daze, only for the full fury of the ion laser to blast him in the chest, vaporizing his clothes and scorching his thick skin as he screamed a roasted. He struggled to rise once more, but Delta was upon him. Inhuman punches and kicks rained down on the writhing creature, battering and bloodying him. Roaring, the original Big Daddy fed his fury, his frustration, his rage and his sorrow into the blows, until at last the metal man took hold of his throat in a gauntleted hand and hauled him up by it.
Cohen choked and sputtered, his broken and shattered arms useless. The rabbit mask had fallen away, broken and blackened, to reveal a face as hideous as the rest of the Creepers the Splicer ruled. His flesh was colorless, his nose a pair of slits, and lumpy, bulbous tumors littered his face. A lopsided mouth full of broken and splintered teeth oozed bloody spittle from its corners, the wispy remains of a moustache hanging limply above it. A trace of humanity remained in this one though.
Sander Cohen's eyes, beady pits of hatred, had softened and clouded, and what could have been a smile crept across his face as Delta pushed the barrel of his harpoon gun against the Splicer's chest, where his black heart should lay.
"The music," he forced, in wheeze. "Can you hear it? Isn't it," he coughed and gasped for air, bloody spraying form his mouth as he gurgled. "Isn't it marvelous?" The scherzo that had played across their battle was rising to its crescendo, pounding and roaring its way to an inevitable conclusion. Cohen looked at him with a crazed twinkle in his eye. "Isn't it?" he manage, sucking in his final breaths.
Delta nodded. The final chord struck, the gun recoiled, and Sander Cohen breathed his last.
Panting, Delta stepped off the stage, leaving the master of Fort Frolic strung up like a trophy atop the ruins of his work. The halls of the Fort were eerily silent, and Sigma finally broke it, gesturing towards the sealed doors. Delta found a weakened section of wall, and revved his drill; it was high time they returned to Tenenbaum.
End Chaper. Phew. That was fun. Hoped you guys enjoyed it. Please review. Your feedback just helps me improve this. Also as a side note, thank you to all who do review, and know that I do try and get back to everyone who does. If you have Private Messaging for this site disabled though, I can't do that.
This chapter drew a lot from the level Fort Frolic in the original Bioshock, and if you're not familiar with it, this chapter may be a bit confusing for you, so for that I apologize. As a side note, the piano song I was trying (and failing) to describe is an actual song from the Bioshock soundtrack. Here's a link for it. If you like piano music, I highly recommend it.
.com/watch?v=Gq2MtuWaMU4
If that doesn't work, just go to YouTube and search Cohen's scherzo no.7. It's a great piece of music from a great game.
Anyways, thanks to all, and hope you liked it. Til next time.