Chapter 49
Paupers Drop
Jack stood on the roof of the dilapidated Fishbowl Diner, his hands clasping his pounding head as he looked around the hall, half in a daze of disbelief, as he tried to think of a way to get everyone out. How quickly everything had unraveled! He'd snatched his satchel from inside the Diner and reclaimed his supply of the ADAM cure - once they'd evacuated the drop, then he'd be able to set up somewhere else.
The colossal crash came from overhead, leading many to believe the entire building was about to cave in. Hundreds hunched over and poised ready for the plume of sea water to come thundering down. Yet all that fell was chunks of concrete. A second crash came, more like a heavy thud. Everyone looked up to the ceiling, where a web of cracks and fissures was expanding with each following thud. More debris fell, clouds of dust raining down every time.
Jack watched, trying to figure out what was happening. The rhythmic, deliberate thudding against the ceiling from the outside indicated intent - it wasn't simply that the structure was collapsing. Someone was hammering through. Surely Edward didn't mean to drown everyone down? How could he re-build without his workforce? It made no sense?
At last, one final, enormous crash against the ceiling brought slabs of concrete pouring down, and revealed a huge hole in the buildings outer layer of Ryanium. It showed clearly now that a perfect hole had been cut through from the outside, and through the hole Jack could make out the interior of a pressurized chamber that had been secured onto the roof. Although too far up to recognize, he could see faces looking down, frantically arranging something up there. The figures began to lower large black hoses down through the hole, as if a nest of snakes was being unleashed. Each hose stopped about twenty feet from the roof of the Diner, and within second, they began to burp and gurgle. Each then erupted with a heavy flow of bright, glowing ADAM. Pure, red ADAM poured from the air down onto the Diner's roof, gushing like a wave of blood down through the holes in the ceiling, over the edge down into the alleys. In all his time in Rapture, Jack had never seen so much ADAM, not in one place.
Confused, he watched the flood of the luminescent goo run over his feet, and wondered what on earth this was about, what Edward's thinking was - how would this benefit him in any way, to dump so much raw ADAM? It could never be enough to drown them? And why not just use seawater if that was the goal? But as Jack watched the tide spill out over the crowds of waiting splicers, he saw their eyes glisten, their focus abandon all else - even each other, wives, children - in favor of the fountain of ADAM before them. They barely hesitated, before the addict in them all was unleashed ten fold, and they began to scramble for a taste of the drug. Their desperation to get to it, to scoop it up in their hands and douse themselves in it grew so fiercely, so quickly, they were soon fighting to get past each other. The animals in them all took over, and violence broke out the likes of which the city had not seen in decades.
"Citizens of Rapture! My family! I give a gift to you all now - a token of my love and appreciation of you all! Free ADAM is now available in Paupers Drop! I have just dropped one hundred thousand litres of ADAM for you all to enjoy - FREE! Feast upon it, for tomorrow we double our efforts to take back my city!" Edward's voice cried out over the public tannoy, and before he had even finished, the crash and banging of hundreds of the approaching splicers began on the Securis doors, shaft covers and drain hatches that fed into Paupers Drop. The sound of their frantic screams and wailing for ADAM could be heard even over the scuffling hoard inside.
"Christ - the mad son of a bitch is going to drive them all mad! They'll tear this place apart to get in and get to the ADAM! He's turned our evacuee's into an insatiable army!" Stanley wailed across at Jack, who stood in disbelief at the writhing sea of creature-like splicers that surrounded the Fishbowl Diner - people that had recently begun to return to some level of humanity even without the cure.
There was a colossal crash, when one of the huge Atlantic Express bulkheads overhead was blown from its fittings, and crashed to the floor. Almost two hundred twisted, screaming splicers broke through it, swinging from the walls by fishhooks, cartwheeling through the air with fire dancing from their hands as they burnt a path through the crowd to get at the ADAM that was pooling around the Diner as it deepened. The violence escalated again, Jack could only look on in despair, as splicers cut each other down, decapitated loved ones, electrified friends and strangers alike with a manner of plasmids, single-minded in their quest to consume as much of the ADAM as possible. He saw one woman licking the ADAM from the face of a head she'd only just swept from someones neck - then to groan in delight and shriek with accomplishment, before going after more.
He tried to call out, "Stop... please, don't..." The word came out, but the helplessness he felt meant they came out as little more than a whisper. "My god... Jesus Christ..." He cried, watching more killing, more mutilation. As he looked to find Stanley Poole, he found him under attack by a Brute Splicer, who held the scrawny little man up in one hand. "Not a sniff of ADAM on this little weasel, not worth my time little runt!" He bellowed. Stanley looked hopelessly to Jack, and in one expression, surrendered to his fate.
"Put him down!" Jack demanded, but in vain. The Brute closed his fist tight around Stanley's neck, and in a sharp twist, snapped his neck. Throwing Stanley's limp corpse down into the crowd, the Brute turned his sight on Jack. "We don't need you no more Mr Ryan... Carson's the guv'nor round 'ere now!" The towering man began to race towards Jack, a murderous glare on his face.
Jack had no escape, he had no time for a plan. Stunned and scared, he closed his eyes and waited for the impact of the Brute's clenching fist.
The blast of the shotgun made Jack flinch, and he opened his eyes in time to see the Brute's jaw blown clear off his face, and his body collapse into a heap. "Father!" Ellie called out as she leapt onto the roof of the diner and took hold of Jack by his waist. Hurrying him away, he saw their escape route - Beth was stood in the doorway through to the Atlantic Express, that the splicers had also broken through. She fired a pistol repeatedly at anyone that tried to approach her, until Ellie and Jack had jumped down from the Diner roof and scurried past her. With the insane bleating and wailing of the splicers in pursuit, the three of them raced through to the station, to a waiting Express Carriage. While Ellie took the controls and opened the station doors, Beth threw Jack into the salon area and slammed the carriage door behind them. Jack collapsed onto the carpeted floor and heaved for breath, his heart pounding so loud in his chest it made his vision blur.
He felt the rocking of the carriage as the pursuing splicers caught up and began to hammer on the windows and pry at the doors. But soon the carriage was rolling forwards, and sinking away from the cacophony into the silence of the sea as it pulled away from Paupers Drop.
"Who's he?" A little girls voice asked finally. "He's the one who's come to save us." Answered another. Rolling over onto his chest and looking up, Jack found the carriage to be filled with almost fifteen little girls, all staring down at his curiously, with large, round eyes and tiny, but beautiful smiles on their faces.