"I fear Rapture has not seen the last of my sins..." -Brigid Tenenbaum
Part Two - Contingency
"Rosey? We're home," Dianne called from downstairs as she shut the door behind her and plopped her backpack on the kitchen counter. "Rose...?"
"The poor little one is asleep," Tenenbaum responded from the sink, finishing washing a dish and pulling the rubber gloves off. "No no, take that dirty thing off of the counter! I just cleaned it!"
"It's just a backpack, it isn't the plague," Dianne offhandedly mumbled and pulled her bag from the countertop.
"I don't know where that thing has been, it has probably been on the floor, where everyone else has had their shoes! The last thing I want is the lot of you and Jack getting sick," The older woman tutted before shaking her head in disapproval and wiping away a strand of gray hair from her forehead. "She is upstairs resting. Please be quiet as you go up."
Dianne nodded obediently. "Sorry, Mama Tenenbaum," she uttered under her breath before heading upstairs to Rose Mary's room.
The other three were already present- Judy and Anne sitting at the foot of her bed, and Julie leaning against the wall adjacent to it; the girl in question with the sheets pulled over her head and silently crying, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. Dianne's brows knit to a furrow of concern as she approached quietly, mouthing a silent 'Is she okay' to Anne.
Anne nods and mouths back, 'Relapse.'
Dianne gritted her teeth, that was the third time this month it happened to any of the five of them.
"Hey," she softly said crouched next to Rose Mary's bedside. "Everything alright?"
"Nothing's alright," Rose Mary wept. "I had the biggest relapse, and I'm so embarrassed."
"Hmm," Dianne thought for a moment. "Well, did it happen in front of other people?"
Finally, the weeping teen pushed the sheets away from her head and sat up. Dark circles captured her eyes, and her skin looked dull and sickly, a shade or two lighter than its standard color. It seemed to catch Dianne by surprise, as her eyebrows raised.
"You look terrible!"
"I know," Rose Mary covered her face with her hands. "I got sick, I think it was something I ate for lunch today. Please don't let Jack know, he'll go out of his way to find out the cause of this!"
Dianne exchanged glances with Anne and Judy, then Julie.
"What...?" The girl eyed her four sisters, warily.
Judy sighed and placed a hand on Rose Mary's covers to smooth out the wrinkles. "Rosey, I think that you got sick 'cause of your relapse."
"Tell us about it. What did you see?" Julie spoke up suddenly and idly paced about her room while she listened to her description.
The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment before continuing with a strained voice as if holding back tears. "It was the same as what we saw in Rapture. Draped walls with red ribbons tied to them, one of our former knights in shining armor. I got dizzy...so dizzy to the point where I kind of blew chunks in the toilet."
Anne couldn't help but grimace. "You threw up in a toilet?"
"Where else was I supposed to? I wasn't going to clog up the sink, and I definitely wasn't gonna let it sit in that hot room in a trash can all day," Rose Mary shot back defensively and folded her arms. She looked away shamefully.
"Eugh, but the school toilets..."
"C' mon, Anne, what would have you done?" Judy commented. Anne ignored her question.
As the four discussed, Julie meandered over to Rose Mary's desk to see many crumpled up sheets of notebook paper wadded in the trash can. A quick glance over her shoulder to see if she was being watched. As soon as she realized she had no eyes on her, she was down on one knee plucking one sheet from the garbage and carefully smoothing it out. The youngest teen scanned the sheet at the chicken-scratch illustrations that were scrawled across the paper. Her eyes widened in surprise with an underlying sense of dread.
The drawings were fervently scribbled, some lines even tearing through the paper. 'Disturbing' was the first word that silently left Julie's lips as she plucked more drawings out of the trash can, all each following the same theme: Rapture. The visions that they experienced as young children, what they saw through their eyes with this mental conditioning fully enacted in their minds.
The drapery on the walls and the vents were engaged in detail, nearly a realistic copy of them, yet hastily drawn at the same time. One drawing was a Big Daddy and a Little Sister, the syringe she held dripping with what could only be described as ADAM. The contents inside the bottle sloshed as the girl walked down the corridor, her other tiny hand holding the mighty hand of her protector. Another was an enraged Splicer attacking the paper's point of view. A few more were variations of hallucinatory-induced visions of rooms, like the school bathroom and a corridor lined with lockers.
Rose Mary always had a knack for drawing, but this was almost belligerent. This was very uncharacteristic of the tender girl, the one who would aid an injured bird and nurse it back to health.
She never illustrated things like this, ever.
Without the others noticing, Julie carefully folded the wrinkled papers and slipped them into her sweater pocket.
"I don't understand." Anne shook her head in disbelief. The four were silent after her statement in contemplative silence.
Dianne wrung her hands nervously. "W-Wouldn't this have washed up years ago? Why did it take so long to pass through currents and a fisherman reeling it in on Palm Beach, of all places?"
I shook my head in opposition. I knew this wasn't going to be easy, but I had to try my best to calm them down before it gets worse. "I don't know. But all I know is that the CIA wants to know what it is, and I'm the one who analyzes this thing. I put in a special request to do so."
"Let me get this straight," Judy lifted a hand to silence the others, gazing at the ground with her eyebrows furrowed in distressed contemplation. "A Big Sister diving suit was just reeled in by a fisherman in southern Florida? The skeleton inside and all?"
I nodded gingerly, thinking as if my words I was about to speak were to soften the blow somehow. "That's right. Completely intact. They have no idea where it came from."
"Yeah, and they can't know! If they did, it would eventually be traced back to us, and we'd be some Area 51 experiments for sure!" Anne threw her hands up in the air in an exasperated manner, shaking her head.
"Shh, keep your voice down!" Dianne hushed her sister, bringing a finger up to her lips. "We can't have anyone listen in on this discussion."
"The lot of you calm down, please." I attempted to soften my hard stare as much as I can in an attempt to ease their nerves. "Listen, I know that this is scary, but we're all in the same boat here. I sure as hell will make sure that they won't trace anything back to us, okay?"
Silence, the three stared at me with eyes reaming into my soul. I hate it when they do that, it always bothered me.
"I need a shot of tequila right about now," Judy mumbled, patting down the curls on her head. "Uffda."
"You guys can trust me." I smiled with an overcoming wash of determination. "We won't be Area 51 experiments, and it won't be traced back to us."
"Please don't let them discover the location," Anne begged. "Please."
My heartfelt heavy as she gave me that look: The puppy-dog eyed look of desperation. Damn it! I hate that too! Come on, Julie, get it together.
"I-..." I felt myself shake my head and take off my glasses to rub the bridge of my nose. A forced sigh escaped my nose. "They will find out eventually, they were already starting to consider pulling the old research archives back out. Remember when those children went missing along the coast of several different countries, including the US?"
"Yeah...what was it called? 'There's Something in the Water' or something?" Judy questioned, the inflection of her voice still melancholy. She took a seat on the velvet sofa and rested her chin on her knuckles, gazing at the wall blankly.
"Right. The feds were thinkin' of getting their hands on this and revisiting the case, and taking the bones from the diving suit to see if it matched any DNA results."
"We don't know anything about what happened after we left down there, aside from what Miss Tenenbaum told us, Julie. Are you sure that it's entirely safe to revisit this?" Anne interjected. "You could cover it up as some diver with a needle attached to their arm."
"Anne, you know I can't do that!" I felt a brief wave of irritation crash over me upon hearing that. I may be easygoing, but I sure as hell take my job seriously. "I'd get fired, and probably arrested for tampering with evidence to a huge case!"
"But how would they know you tampered with it? You could have received it that way, pin the blame on someone else."
"Anne, Julie, cut it out," Dianne sternly remarked. "You aren't going to cover it up."
"Then what do you suggest I do?" I shot back with an agitated temper.
"Simple," Dianne lifted her head and looked at the three of us. "We gather our own information from someone who does know about Rapture, then you can craft your knowledge and conveniently leave out the detrimental parts."
My arms folded, and I rested my weight on one foot. "How do you believe we could get someone with that knowledge, that's still kickin'?"
"Miss Eleanor Lamb, to my knowledge, is still alive and well. We may have a number in Miss Tenenbaum's things."
This just got very much more complex than I anticipated.
hi what's up, welcome back to "it's 4 am and i'm awake writing, what has my life come to" hour with remix lmao
i hope this chapter was enjoyable, i had a hard time keeping the ball rolling with this one, but i think it's smooth sailing for the next few chapters! if there are any inconsistensies with the lore, please point that out in the reviews and i will be quick to correct it. thank you, again, merendinoemiliano, for reviewing my first chapter and catching that minor detail that was incorrect, and for the encouraging words!
at the moment i'm currently making plans for what to write the next chapter and so on, but i may not be able to translate it onto document by tomorrow night, but who knows. just a forewarning, updates won't be as quick in the future lol
i also don't plan on this fic being too big of a story, as cool as that may sound. i'm shooting for at least five chapters, but that may be it, who knows.
anyways. stay safe, god bless ya, and thanks for reading until the end of this chapter! here's to hopefully higher quality chapters in the future! *clinks champagne glass*
until next time...
-rtr
