ii.

The spectral girl with the cigarette mouths smoke-wreathed invitations when you pass her in the Tea Garden. You'd seen her unchaperoned back by the trellis and twining herself into the starlight brilliance of the festival lights on the patio. She says things like my daddy don't even know I'm here while you load the electric buck into your shotgun and I wish that Tommy Wilkers would grow a pair and ask me to dance already while Chantilly Lace warbles over the PA. Your eyes have caught half a dozen times on the flash of her petticoats as she rounds the corners ahead of you with bare ankles and squealing snorts of laughter.

You pass through the ghost of a man reading a newspaper and the memory snaggles and snaps around you like an old film reel. You consider dying here too while you shoot the electric buck into the splicer trying to eat your eyes. You're not altogether sure what's going to become of Rapture after this is over, but something tells you that when Rapture dies, it won't be the explosive fugue of a plane dying over water or the evisceration Johnny suffered at the splicers hooks. Rapture will die in inches. Voice by voice. Safety lights, exit lights, tunnel lights winking out one by one. Thirsty little roots lapping at the freshwater supply until the water wheel eventually stops turning. You wonder if you're actively killing Arcadia or just unhooking the undead body of it from life support to let it die naturally.

Julie Langford says my trees in her audio diaries with the same inflection that the splicer mother had sang to her baby in the pram. You think about how you're killing them all just by being in Rapture. Gentle massacres. Memories that die with the whisper of unwinding reels.

.

Atlas veers between fury and manic determination for another hour. His outbursts have nearly gotten you killed half a dozen times since entering Arcadia. Listening to his rage feels a lot like weathering a storm from the quarterdeck of a ship. There's a chance it'll sweep you back in the direction of land and an equal chance it'll lay you out in pieces along the ocean floor. "I want you to harvest the Sisters on this level, Jack," Atlas says. "I can see you limping on the security cameras. You're runnin' on empty."

"No." You don't contradict him often but this has been a sticking point. He's called you every derivative of 'sucker' and 'idiot' in the English lexicon and something that sounds like German and maybe Gaelic and the needle still hasn't budged in you. You'll kill most anything for him at this point, climb over just about every bed of coals, but you have limits. He tests them often.

"I already told you they're not people. Anything resembling human's been sucked out of them long before you got here."

"I can survive without it."

"A few hours in Rapture and you think you know the lay of the whole land, do you." Atlas is silk in the center and rawhide on his edges. He's been this way since Neptune's Bounty. "It ever occur to you I might know a thing or two more about this hellhole? That just maybe I have a wee bit more experience than you knowing what's human and what just walks around in a skin?"

"I trust you. I just don't need to harvest them."

"And if I say you do?"

"Maybe you're wrong."

Atlas fulminates like the sea on the other shore. "We'll see."

You wait for him to go on. He doesn't. You follow the call of the water wheel and dispatch the next batch of splicers raining down on you from the ceiling with your wrench, and the entire time the radio stays silent.

You give him time. The next half hour is dedicated to making use of the U-Invent as you keep an eye on your blind side. You spread out the complicated minutiae of the ingredients on the ground to try to puzzle out their functions. When you finally manage to input them the correct way, the machine clunks and dispenses a hacking tool – the first one you've managed to make successfully.

You offer it up to a security camera with a smile. Usually the radio crackles at this point: a sigh or a laugh, an admission of never could get those damn things to work meself or yeah, I know you're clever, Jack, now quit peacocking around before some splicer pops that big head of yours. The radio stays silent. The security camera whirs and clicks as it refocuses to your right, sweeping its green diagnostics bar over you.

You're careful to avoid squashing the flowers as you weave your way through Arcadia's meadows. The trash can on the other side yields a half-eaten chocolate bar and some water; you manage to only eat two squares before the sweetness starts to nauseate you. You pack it away for later and feed the stale water to a lilac bush. Atlas doesn't berate you for wasting water. There are no bullets or bandages in the next pneumo tube; you stand there for a moment, hoping maybe he'll change his mind. He doesn't.

You hesitate on the call button. You know there are very few spots in Rapture that Atlas can't see you at least peripherally. You stand there, radio in hand, and hope that he notices you stagnating. Maybe you look lost boyo or did one of those goddamn splicers knock you around. There's nothing.

"Atlas." You speak into the receiver before you realize you'd planned to.

The radio doesn't click back. You check its batteries. It's working fine. "I'm," you begin again, and without warning your throat seizes up.

You drop to a crouch. The sea gurgles underneath and shoves itself around above you. Pressure on your ears and sinuses. You wait and wait for the radio to speak to you until the silence tightens like a hand on your throat.

Splicers begin knocking about somewhere up ahead. You think you might be doing something close to panicking but you're not sure what to call it. You get up and take out your wrench. The splicers rip a chunk out of your back in your preoccupation and one of them kicks you so hard in the head dropping from the ceiling that you drift in and out of consciousness for a while after you kill it. You wake with your back pressed against the frigid glass of a deserted tunnel, dizzy as the bubbles from the pipes outside race each other up past Rapture's spires.

The radio stays silent.

.

The Little Sister in Arcadia is splashing her bare feet in splicer's blood by the Farmer's Market. Having taken a direct fiery hit from a Houdini splicer minutes earlier, the security drone you hacked bweeps pitifully as it tries to cool down its melting circuits. Unable to stand the sounds of its distress, you thank it under your breath for helping you as you decommission it. It shuts down with a gentle shudder of gears in your hands.

You use the cover of the counter to reload your electric buck, wondering how to time your attack with so much exposed space. You trail the bloody smears of her footprints as she leads the Daddy back to the hills and hope you can use the cover of the trees to get in a flanking attack before facing it head on.

You fail. The Little Sister shrieks her warning a half-step too early, and the Big Daddy whirls with unanticipated speed to catch you in the stomach with its club of an arm, and all strategy goes crashing out of your head.

You clip off a tree and tumble ass over fist down the embankment, through the specter of a girl shrieking with delight as she outruns a man's outstretched arm. The shotgun flies out of your hands. You're half in and half out of her memory as you stagger to your feet. The Big Daddy storms through the wisps, gatling gun painting a lethal spray over the wall behind you.

Your proximity mine is in your hand as you prime Incinerate in the other. You prime it just in time to duck another swing and then sacrifice your ribs in order to activate the countdown before you're splattered halfway across the room. You twist the landing through the pain, shooting blindly from your palm, sending flame that ricochets off the wall and another that fizzles out in the dust. The Big Daddy turns towards you with intention that shakes the earth under your cheek.

You have no breath to curse. You can't stand. You drop to your belly instead, steadying your elbow like a gun, and this time fire with purpose. Your ears catch the quickening beep of the mine and you know this is the last time you can rely on good fortune.

You cycle through your head and land on the Electro Bolt, summoning the last of your EVE reserves to fire a shot directly into the Daddy's face. It stumbles back a pace to seize; you hear the Little Sister scream a warning before the roar of the proximity mine erupting overtakes the rest.

You wake up with a flood of bile in your mouth. You spit it out and suck in a sobbing breath. Hand shaking, you drag the last EVE canister from your pocket and center the needle over your vein. It takes you three tries to depress it.

You gag against the ground for a while, feeling your legs jerk spasmodically until things start to realign themselves in your head. You manage to make it to your feet but are forced to navigate the wall hand over hand to move yourself forward.

The girl is weeping over the charred husk of machinery. Seeing your approach, the Sister leaps to her feet to flee past you. Her bare feet slip in the rucked-up soil as she feints right and tries to dart left.

You reach out and catch her around her middle, carefully gathering her up off the ground as she wails like a tomcat. Blood and oil smear on her dress. You gently work your fingers through her hair to cradle the side of her head, thumbing the incidental cut on her ear from shrapnel. She seizes onto your wrist and digs in with jagged nails.

You stroke the tangled hair by her temple until she gives up to weep fitfully against your palm. Her emaciated body quakes as she throws her arms around your neck. You brace the back of her head and untangle the sunlight, separating it from the ADAM until the darkness shudders apart.

This one doesn't thank you with words. She grabs your wrist and turns it to bare the cuts her fingernails made, trying to soothe away the blood. You dissuade her and tuck her hair behind her ears. She hiccups, seizes your hand, plants a clumsy kiss on your abraded knuckles. Her tears sting like the sea.

You help boost her up to the nearest hole and pass up her stuffed rabbit after her. Her bare feet scuttle and fade until she's swallowed. You lose track of time standing there, wavering in place, swayed by the artificial breeze in the canopy overhead.

The radio crackles.

Every drop of blood in you freezes like midwinter. Suddenly desperate, you hang onto your breath, straining with every ounce of you to pick up the nuance on the other end. Papers. A click of what sounds like a pen. A bottle hitting wood.

Atlas says, wan and inflectionless, for the first time in hours, "Sit down a spell, Jack."

You still have supplies to salvage from the Big Daddy. Your knees will no longer support you. Clumsy, eyes stinging, you tumble your way over to the nearest tree and let yourself slump down against it. Arcadia twines in and out of your periphery, the tea room starlit with festival ghosts.

You're not sure if he intends that you speak first, but you offer the first ceasefire. "I'm sorry."

"Oh are you."

"About your family."

Atlas makes a sound away from the receiver. It sounds ugly. You can't read his mind but you're aware that it's not what he wanted to hear. "You can talk about them if you need to," you offer, throat starting to tighten again. That near-panic from the tunnels. "I'll listen."

"You're sittin' to recharge, Jack, not run your mouth. I don't need your puling on top of me own."

"I'll listen."

"To what."

"If you need to yell at me. I'll listen."

"Oh how kind of you," Atlas says. "And which fuck-up would you like me to illuminate for you, may I ask? You want me to get numerical? Alphabetical? Do you want me to start with the fact you can't shoot for shit? That you don't know how to plug up your holes when you spring a leak? The fact your, your… your pathological need to 'save' everything slowed us down enough that we didn't get to the sub in time?"

You tread softly. "That wasn't my fault."

"I know whose bloody fault it is, do you think that makes it sweeter? You think I give a damn which fuck-up cost which life? My family is dead."

"It's not my fault. But you can talk about it with me. I'll listen."

"The hell're you–" Atlas's voice abruptly drops back, like he's turned away from the radio. "It's like talking to a child. I'm talking to a child."

"I know you don't like what I'm doing, but I can't change who I am. Not even for you." You'd suspected it, but the confirmation that he has blamed you for his family's death, even obliquely, leaves you more winded than the hit to your ribs. You can scarcely breathe. "I won't apologize for that. I did my best."

"The hell did you ask me for then."

"I didn't ask. I just said I'd listen if you needed to talk."

"Boyo, you are pushing every last one of me buttons, and I've got a fair few," Atlas says. "You're still out there spilling blood for those little mutants while my wife and child are in pieces on the ocean floor. You're damn straight I don't like it. You think that makes a difference now?"

"I'm getting by. I don't have to harvest the Sisters to get ADAM. And Dr. Tenenbaum sends some sometimes."

"And what if I told you that you had to harvest one of them? Just one? These amounts you're getting, these… these drips, they're not enough. You're runnin' on empty. There's a Gatherer's Garden coming up and you're gonna need what it has to offer. You keep getting knocked around the way you've been, sooner or later my help won't be enough."

You let the muddy diphthong in enough trail off into the silence. "No."

"No."

"I can't."

"You mean you won't."

You don't specify.

"And if I asked you to do it? All kind in the way you like so much?"

"I'm getting by. I don't need to harvest them."

"Oh but Jack," Atlas says, suddenly very soft. "I'm asking what you would do if I asked you kindly."

The heady scent of foliage around you intensifies without warning. Your head pounds. Abruptly dizzy, you surreptitiously steady yourself against the tree to keep yourself from falling. The colors swarm at you again: summers in the valley, humidity that soaked you in sweat, oppressive stillness before the incoming storm broke over the valley.

You're aware that the radio has grown quiet again. You tilt your head on the trunk with effort to find the nearest green-tinged security camera. "Likely break you in half, the way you've got your compass screwed on so tight," Atlas murmurs, and just like that the storm passes without a strike. "Forget it. Listen, I've got something to see to on my end, but you watch your step, you hear me? That area's packed with splicers and they've got all the cover in the world to take you by surprise."

You don't move. The rents in your skin are already closing but your trousers are still caked with blood. You feel cold and dispirited.

"Jack?"

You don't reply.

"Are you—" Atlas stops. There's what sounds like a scuttle of papers on the other end, a scoot of a chair on a hardwood floor. "Jack? You with me?"

You think about sleeping. The Tea Garden is littered with shrapnel now but the pervasive scent of flowers is still stronger than blood. Alice slept in stranger places in Wonderland. There'd even been a stuffed rabbit here.

"I saw you take that beating but I didn't think… can you hear me? Are you all right?"

The hike of dread in his voice is too much for you to ignore. You relent. "What."

There's a pause. "Are you…" Atlas stops again, much longer this time. When he speaks again he's incredulous. "Wait a minute, are you angry with me?"

You childishly remain silent. "He's actually angry with me. Of all the—" Atlas unleashes a litany of blasphemy that would've made your pastor's nose hairs shrivel. "Jack, for fuck's sake, are we really going to do this now? I didn't mean it, all right? I was talkin' out my ear. Ryan's the one who put my family into the water, not you. Don't you think I know that? Can't you give me a little bit of latitude here?"

"I'm tired." It comes out inside a breath. You're no longer angry but it doesn't mean you're fine either. The wrench and your hand are the same temperature. Your fingertips have been partially numb since the explosion and you wonder if there's nerve damage somewhere. "I did my best. I can't do any more than that."

"Jack, I know you—" you hear another quick intake of breath that might be frustration, might not be. "Fuck me. Jack, listen to me. You're white as a Boston winter. I'm sending you some food in the pneumo. I need you to get it down your neck."

You don't say anything.

"Just do it for me, all right? Can you do me that favor?"

You've done him plenty of favors. Your price for them is still lodged unvoiced in your chest and has been since the sub exploded in your face. You're dizzy again. "You're really gonna make me say it," Atlas says. "You're a sadist. Fine. You win. I'm sorry. You happy?"

It's not what you want to hear. You're not happy. The bark feels like a pillow under your head and somewhere in the distance a woman is screaming for her wretch of a husband to come out so she can kill him.

"Jack."

"You left me."

Atlas goes silent.

It no longer hurts to breathe but something in your chest still feels like it's floating. The bleeding has stopped. You've got the sensation that even with EVE coursing through you, it should probably take humans longer to heal than this. Cuts and burns had mended themselves overnight for you growing up at the farm, but this. The flesh is knitting so fast you can feel the spider-crawl of it under the fabric. In an hour there might not even be a scar. "I was fighting for you. You got mad at me anyway. You left me alone."

You can hear Atlas breathing on the other side.

"Yell at me if you want. Curse at me. Be mean to me. Just please be…" your throat closes. Be what. Please be what. What is Atlas. A specter like the ones in Arcadia. Conditional solace.

You rummage around to get up. It hurts but not prohibitively. You tuck the wrench into your belt and use the trunk of the tree to angle yourself upright.

Atlas murmurs, crushingly weary, "Sit down."

"I have to get going."

"Sit down, lad."

You like it when he asks nicely. This order is different. It goes straight to your stomach and warms your spine.

You sit. "Jack, I'll be the first to admit I don't always keep a lid on it all when I should," Atlas says. "I got a lot of spare parts that don't always fit back the way they used to. I know you're doing your best. I'm… I'm grateful. It just don't always come out right. Can you understand that?"

You listen. He sounds tired and not terribly contrite, but it doesn't sound like a lie. You think just that's genuinely the best Atlas of Rapture can do. "You piss me off something fierce, I won't lie to you, but I don't want you dead," Atlas says. "So I'll tell you what. I'll stop fighting you on the Sisters. I'll let you do it your way. But in return, you have to promise me you'll listen to what I have to say."

"I won't kill anyone I don't have to."

"I'm not on about that. I want you to listen more when I tell you something is dangerous, or when something can't be fixed. I was right about them Big Daddies, wasn't I? Got your teeth knocked clean to the other end of you because you tried to talk pretty with them instead of blowing them up like I told you. Sometimes a trap is a trap, boyo. And I know more about traps than anyone else in this pile of junk."

"Okay." It's easy enough to agree to. There have been times you went poking your nose into corners Atlas has warned you against, and you can admit to yourself that more often than not your curiosity has blown up in your face. More to the point, Atlas seems to be caring about you. It's rough-edged concern but it's there. You drink it in. "I meant what I said. About you talking to me about your family. I'll listen. Whenever you want."

"You know, I really think you would.." There's a wholly unreadable note in his voice. "Fortunately for your poor ears, I'm not of a mind to take any more of your charity at the moment. Now do me a favor, shut up and put something down your gob. Come on, get up. The food's in the pneumo. I'll check back in a tick. Eat it all, you understand? You need every bit of it."

"I'll be fine." You add, out of the inspiration of renewed camaraderie, "I'll eat in the Tea Garden."

"Now he gets fancy." Again it sounds like Atlas has turned away from the radio. He comes back. "Just pick a green spot and get every scrap of that food down your neck before something comes to grab it from you, would you kindly?"

"Okay." There are plenty of green spots.

"Those splicers in the Glens, they were gone in the head long before the ADAM got to them. You watch your back."

"Okay."

You sit on a patch of moss and take down most of the sandwich until yellow gas starts hissing from the vents. Ryan chuckles at you about it but you're not that invested. You watch it slowly choke the green out of Arcadia while you finish your chips, fishing in the bottom of the bag for crumbs and licking your fingertips to mop up the grease. The vines over your head curl and the tendrils of the plants around your feet shrivel into dead spider legs. The flowers have all withered into knots by the time you get to your cream cake. You wash it all down with a can of Pep Soda, and the last drop of liquid tastes like acid on your tongue.

When you're done getting every scrap of food down your neck and the last green spot underneath you has yellowed and died, you throw away your garbage and go to investigate whatever's killing you this time.