The Case of the Dame 02

"Is there a particular reason that we are going to the orphanage?" Elizabeth asked. She stepped lightly along next to Lisa as the duo traveled down the main conduit of the underwater city, her hips swaying, her dress swishing.

Taylor would never be caught dead in a dress.

Lisa scowled and took a swig from her flask.

"And must you keep drinking that? You are supposed to be competent, not drunk, Miss Hebert."

"Mrs. Hebert," Lisa snapped. "I'm nowhere near drunk, Lizzie." She chose to ignore Elizabeth's scowl at the new nickname. Her office's nameplate clearly stated that she was a Mrs. If Elizabeth couldn't be bothered to read that much, then it wasn't her problem. "I'm walking straight, I'm not slurring, I can tell that you're more sad than angry. Look lady, I've got reason to drink myself stupid. I don't need your pity."

"Can you do your job, Mrs. Hebert?"

"I'll find your lost kid."

Besides, she needed to check in with her contacts anyway. At least some of this schizo tech had to have progressed to a usable point by now. Probably. Hopefully.

She tried to hide her wince, unsuccessfully apparently as Elizabeth narrowed her gaze.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. Personal issue." Just this city about to implode like good old Brockton. Except in BB, if things got really bad, she could have always just grabbed Taylor, hopped on a bus, and ran. Here…here when everything inevitably blew up, the sea was going to rush in and wipe it all away.

And then she would never get home, even if she managed to survive the collapse. And if she didn't, well at least she'd eventually see Taylor again that way…

"You never answered my question."

Lisa sighed. "We need to track who has an interest in the kid before we can track who took her. And someone definitely took her. I know you haven't been around here long, but just a heads up, Lizzie, girls have been disappearing left and right for the past few weeks."

Elizabeth controlled her reaction well. Her eye twitched and her breathing hitched for a bare moment. It wasn't much; it was enough to confirm Lisa's hunch: Elizabeth was new to Rapture. She was trying too hard to fit in, her accent was off, she didn't recognize the streets, and…her dress didn't match her hair. No one in Rapture would've worn that, they knew better. A cosplayer though…

Was there another Tear? A new one? Something she had missed? Or was Elizabeth a refugee from that flying city? Had she figured out a way to cross over? Either way, sticking close to the woman had a lot of potential to open up new avenues for research.

"Why are girls vanishing?"

So that was how she wanted to play it? Okay, Lisa could play ball for now. She'd get her answers as they went along - one way or another.

"According to Ryan, Fontaine's people have been kidnapping and brainwashing them to subvert his utopia. According to Fontaine, Ryan is mutating them into monsters to use against the populace. According to rumor, they're ghosts. Funnily enough, no one is blaming Mr. Big and Gold who you'd think would be a good scapegoat. That says a hell of a lot about the actual culprits."

"So what is the truth then?"

"Probably something in the middle, based on my experience." Lisa shrugged. "Getting into the thick of this hasn't been high on my priority list. It would make me more trouble than I'm worth."

Elizabeth scowled. "They're children!"

"And I'm one woman who is particularly adverse to using plasmids." Lisa stopped and fixed Elizabeth with a harsh glare. "I feel for those kids, but both sides only tolerate me because I don't mess with them more than I help them. The girls are something big. I want to live, Elizabeth. I can help you with your girl because they won't care about just one. But don't expect me to disassemble the entire system, unless you can get me the hell out of here the same way you slipped in."

"I don't…" she trailed off, shaking her head. "That way is closed to me."

Fuck! Ah well, it had been a pipe dream anyway.

"Okay then, we stick with Plan A. The orphanage is just ahead."

Taylor would have loved this city. Well, she would have loved it right before she tore it down to the bedrock and completely rebuilt it, excising Fontaine and Ryan and their factions like the cancer that they both were. And Lisa would have been right there, next to her, helping her the entire way.

It was an underwater paradise, all one had to do was look outside the viewports to see the exotic seascape, the flora, the fauna, everything was just…beautiful. If only the people hadn't ruined it.

"This is…" Elizabeth murmured as they passed the last empty bed. "Where did all of the children go?"

"I told you that girls were disappearing," Lisa sighed. "Look at the sheets, look at the chests. Do you see the difference between the boys' side and the girls' side?"

Elizabeth dropped to one knee, her frown deepening as she ran a hand over the nearest storage chest. She inspected it for several more seconds, lifting the lid and running her hands over the interior, eventually shaking her head and peering back up at Lisa. Lisa knelt next to her, pointing at one of the corners.

"This section is torn, and there are scuffs there. That chest had a forgotten car in it and that one had an action figure."

"Okay…what does all that mean?"

"It means, Liz, that the people who emptied these ones - the boys' chests - weren't professionals. They grabbed the things in them at random, damaging the sides, forgetting stuff - in short, they were probably emptied by the kids themselves."

"So the Madame didn't lie when she said the children were adopted?"

"For the boys? Probably not. But then, you turn around," Lisa turned and indicated the other line of storage chests, "and the story changes. These ones were professionally emptied. There's no damage, nothing was left behind, each one is clean as a whistle. All of the girls had their things removed by someone who wanted to make sure there was no record of their existence here."

Elizabeth's eyes closed. It was several seconds before she was composed enough to meet Lisa's gaze again and reply, "You got all of that with a two minute inspection of the room?"

"Used to be that I could get all of that in two seconds," Lisa said. She took a quick sip from her flask, grimacing at the task of the whiskey. "I'm good at picking up details, Liz. I trained myself for it for a long time."

"Perhaps you can find her," Elizabeth said. She stood, dusting her dress off and turning to face Lisa, her arms at her side. "Why ensure the boys are sent to families?"

"That likely has more to do with what they are doing with the girls. If I had to guess, it's something to do with conditioning, or, something that having a Y chromosome just genetically disqualifies you for. Maybe both. Probably both. This whole city is a mad tinker's dreamland and I wouldn't put it past either side to need a little girl for their experiments."

"But -"

"People want to protect little girls. If you introduce some sort of mutation in the kid beforehand, then condition a higher level of that natural protective instinct into a bodyguard, well you've got a perfect little seedbed for something on hand."

"But -"

Lisa shook her head, again cutting Elizabeth off. "It's a fact of life down here Liz, people gravitate towards helping out girls more than guys. It's part of Ryan's Utopia. He's a sexist asshole."

Elizabeth blinked. "You are not a very pleasant person are you?"

That had been Taylor's first reaction too.

"You should have met me 6 months ago. I was much nicer back then."

"Oh? Did you have friends then?" Elizabeth asked, arching her eyebrows.

Lisa pushed past her, grabbing for the whiskey flask. "I had a wife."

As the door to the Orphanage closed behind them, Lisa moved to an alleyway and hopped up to sit on one of the stacked boxes. She leaned back and met Elizabeth's gaze as the other woman stood tall, crossing her arms, eyebrows raised.

"Okay, so, real talk time, Elizabeth."

"Oh, so you are using my name now?"

"Like I said, real talk time." Lisa bent forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I'll find Sally for you. But you need to be prepared for bad news. This place was owned by Fontaine but Ryan has been stealing kids as well. When both sides have the same issue it usually means there's an arms race going on. An arms race with people as a component is, let's say 'bad' and leave it at that. It never ends well. The odds are good that Sally has already been subjected to whatever experiment they're running. I'm sorry, I really am, it sucks, but you need to be prepared for that. If you walk away now, I can find her, give you my report, and…"

"What? Take care of the problem?" Elizabeth snapped. "Would you kill her just because she's been hurt by the monsters that run this city, Mrs. Hebert?"

Lisa remembered another girl, a teenager, handcuffed to a bed, drugged out of her mind, held for months…Dinah had never gotten over her trauma, she was more at home in Taylor's Hive - with everyone else's voices drowning out Coil's phantom - than she ever was in their home.

"Sometimes, death is kinder."

Elizabeth's arms fell to her side and the scowl dropped from her face. "Do you wish…that you had died, Mrs. Hebert?"

"Not yet," Lisa murmured. "When there's no hope, and I'm still stuck here, then…maybe then. But right now…" She shook herself and clenched her jaw. "We're not talking about me, we're talking about Sally and we're talking about you. I doubt we'll be able to reach the girl before they do whatever they're going to do to her. So if you don't want to walk away, prepare yourself; and be ready to take care of her for the rest of her life."

Dropping down from the boxes, Lisa walked past Elizabeth. She was nearly at the mouth of the alley when the woman called out one more question, "Is that what you and wife did, Mrs. Hebert?"

Lisa missed a step, barely catching herself on the nearby wall before she tumbled to the alley's floor. Memories flashed through her. Dinah clinging to Taylor's back as the three of them walked out of the destroyed base. Dinah holding Lisa's hand as she read a bedtime story. Dinah hiding behind their legs as they talked to the social worker from the Youth Guard and threatened the asshole into leaving them alone.

"Yeah. I like to think that my daughter misses me as much as I miss her. Important survival tip for working with me, Liz, I am a fucking hypocrite."