Not that being stuffed, defenseless and lost as all buggery, wasn't absolutely riveting – but Atlas would very much like to be done with this whole ordeal now.
He'd stayed put under that desk, pressed up against some lumpy bag listening to the goliath's footsteps passing him by three times already, going on a forth. It was difficult to place if the daddy was simply circling or if it was checking new areas each loop around, its return past the door Atlas had locked so close in time that it was hard to tell if it was aimlessly wandering or still seeking out it's lost prey.
Regardless of its intent Atlas knew he couldn't stay here.
Already he'd played a number of scenarios through his mind. The most cowardly of them being to remain here for as long as was humanly possible, which he clocked in at being around two or three days. Had he any drinking water perhaps a week before starvation took him.
That was not exactly an appealing end to the story of Rapture's 'voice of the people' but then again the way the revolution had panned out there really wasn't any good end to that tale.
Another option of his was to try sneaking past the beast and finding anything that might serve as a means of escape or way to defend himself, but Atlas was still running blind. He didn't know what this place was and while he'd miraculously managed to avoid find his way to a complete dead-end during his first instinctual mad dash he didn't fancy pulling that same magic a second time around.
So he was left with his final option, seeing what he could use in this tiny box of a room that might save his hide. This option was the least immediately perilous but also perhaps the longest shot. Still he chose to give it a go, waiting for the fourth pass of the tin man's heavily placed gait until he was sure it'd not accidently manage a glimpse of him in a moment of suburb carelessness and crawled out from under his hidey-hole.
Finding that when he pressed his palm against the fabric of the bag he'd unintentionally made his uncomfortable pillow for the stay under the desk, that it shifted and gave away as the contents that made it so lumpy moved inside, almost causing Atlas to lose his balance. If he fell and broke his skull on the ground it would be the most humiliating, anticlimactic death known to man.
Carefully Atlas peered back through the glass between him and the rest of the building and found nothing stirring on the other side. Satisfied he at least had a few minutes to see what might have been left in this room when the city decided to take a rapid downward plummet into chaos, Atlas got to scouring the desk he'd previously been hunkered under. Any papers were promptly ignored, anything that did not register as a useful supply tossed to the ground. He pocketed a few candy bars that while entirely unappealing to the taste buds, would at least keep him up and running without an empty tank for a while longer.
While he'd been content to ignore any loose papers of files something else caught his eye. As he tore through the cabinets Atlas found himself pausing on a set of blueprints. It was only a passing moment of curiosity seeing the designs for what was obviously a bathysphere.
What kept his interest was the hand written note plastered to the bottom of it that simply read 'off grid'. Somehow that simple little note to the owner of the blueprints read more like 'fuck Andrew Ryan' than it did a farfetched scheme.
Everyone knew that all the bathyspheres within Rapture belonged to Ryan. He'd shut them all down the moment it seemed the city's residents had become flight risks. Not a single one had budged without the bastard's say so, not since Jack's arrival. A feat that still escaped Atlas's understanding. It was a pipedream to think anyone could construct a bathysphere that would escape Ryan's ever-watchful eye. And yet when Atlas peered at the note he couldn't help but notice that enquire had a lovely bold red tick next to it. A mark of an impossible victory.
As Atlas's mind began to run away with the slim hope that someone might have managed such a exploit a key piece of information from the grotesque squid man himself came back to Atlas. This was one of Fontaine's schemes wasn't it? Abruptly that pipe dream seemed infinitely more feasible.
If anyone was to have the spine and means of creating such a vessel right under Ryan's nose – it was the smuggler king of parasites himself.
A new curiosity began to grow inside of Atlas as he turned away from the desk, eyes sweeping his surroundings again. An office space clearly, but now he found himself wondering exactly who had frequented this space.
It did not take him long to locate a few indicators.
First and foremost the sheer material value of everything inside significantly exceeded that of most often items in Rapture. Something that belonged to the one percent that had faired well in the underwater prison. Someone like Fontaine.
What had been a curiosity became something akin to hope. Atlas wouldn't be bold enough to apply that word to it immediately, having had too many disappointments as plans and optimisms collapse around him to put much stock in hope. But it was close enough.
If anyone in Rapture had weapons and means of escape squirreled away – it was Frank Fontaine.
Ransacking the place became a more focused effort once Atlas felt he might actually find something of value. What he found nearly stopped his heart in place. A pistol. A fucking honest to god pistol. Atlas could have cheered in that moment had he not been acutely aware of the stalking monster somewhere just beyond his safe haven.
The gun had been so innocently left abandoned atop a safe. Whatever gold or illegal documents would be stashed inside not nearly as important as the heavy set of the gun in Atlas's hands and he'd not run the risk of triggering an alarm.
He never did have a hacker's hands – but the kid likely could have popped this one open in a matter of sends. A jack of all trades that one, it seemed there was nothing he could not do and if met with something that stumped him, the kid had unfailing found a work around. Calm as could be without a word – unstoppable. Atlas could only hope that had not changed any in his absence. He had to get back to the boy and this gun was a step in the right direction.
Carefully he snapped the barrel open and found it full. Now he'd only need to find a few more bullets and he'd be able to take out a handful of splicers. Stealth he knew would remain his primary approach to the situation but knowing if a splicer got wise he'd be able to unload some lead between their stupid deformed heads was a great weight off his mind.
The gun secured Atlas turned his focus to tearing the rest of the place apart in the hopes of discovering a few more hidden gems.
He should have known that if he went looking around dead men's remnants he'd only find the dirt they didn't bother pouring over the coffin on the way down.
Where he'd shrugged off notes and files with little interest earlier Atlas found himself paying more attention now. He attributed this to the blueprints that gave him reason for pause earlier and the relief that came with the discovery of a means of protection. He had more patience with everything else – but even that was slim. Still Atlas found his eyes passing over old photos and files a bit more slowly this time around.
He'd assigned this place the label of a laboratory of some kind. Part of Fontaine's science division at a guess. So it was unsurprisingly when he found photos of plasmid development and more gruesomely – the little sisters. Atlas knew there was no reason to pour over images like that; the history of monsters was better left alone and buried with the sinking city.
Atlas didn't need a refresher on the horrors of Rapture – but there was something out of place about one of the photos. It took him a moment to realise what it was that kept him looking at the faded image of two scientists standing next to one of their little Frankenstein creatures.
It was a boy.
Despite himself Atlas plucked up the worn photograph, immediately recognizing the two scientists. Mama goose herself and the chink, before one's morality kick and the other kicked the bucket.
The child that sat between them, miserable and sickly looking, connected to more cables than he could follow. Briefly Atlas wondered if they'd attempted to create little brothers to match their sisters but if that was the case than this child was too young and definitely dead, as he'd never once seen a boy out collecting the blood from those angels scattered around. Even if he had, Atlas wouldn't hold out hope for children of any kind in Rapture. A monster or death, the result much the same regardless.
This must have been a failed test, an early one, as they just plowed through children in Rapture to achieve their ends. Atlas thought of Patrick, imagined if it had been him sitting there. Staring forlornly at the photographer – in pain. Mistreated, uncared for, unwanted beyond the use as a tool to some hardhearted monster in a greater game.
He imagined it was his son sitting there looking out at him through a photographer's glass eye and Atlas's blood boiled.
"Better off for everyone you're dead as dust, Fontaine. If you weren't, I'd have happily put you under me self." Atlas snarled as he forced himself to look away from the photo. Pocketing it on some kind of impulse as he was caught up in his ill thoughts of the dead.
Growling under his breath Atlas approached the control panel located next to the desk he'd previously hidden under. "Now lets see if you can't still be of use while you're rotting away."
Atlas carefully scrutinized the set of controls; he found door locks none of which he dared to touch for fear of releasing something that should stay behind them or inadvertently trapping himself. He very nearly abandoned the control panel until he noticed a little green light that simply read 'bathysphere.'
His heart had certainly stopped that time.
Disbelieving he set both hands down on either side of the button, as though if he looked closer the letters would reshuffle themselves to something less useful. But they remained and that little niggling sense of something he'd refused to refer to as hope skyrocketed.
That previous thought he'd let pass through his mind without scrutiny returned with a new meaning. If anyone was to have the spine and means of creating such a vessel right under Ryan's nose—
A decision made Atlas snatched up the blueprints he'd set aside before and took stock of the panel one last time, using the door sequences and what little he knew of the place to begin hedging bets on which way this magical escape was located.
As he moved Atlas likened Fontaine's private bathysphere to spitting in the face of god – a god that hadn't yet felt the weight of their tyranny. Before he knew it Atlas was in need of something to carry the few things he'd managed to make use of in the office. This took only a few seconds to rectify.
Atlas ended up back down on his hands and knees, and ignoring the small spike of spite he felt looking back under the desk he'd been forced under in his earlier panic. Now he reached under it looking for the lumpy fabric he'd been crammed up against in his wait and his fingers met with what felt like a leather strap. Pulling back he dragged out an old duffel bag, it was full but not particularly heavy. Atlas yanked it between his legs, pulling it open and nearly let out a bark of laughter as he saw the piles of cash inside. "Rich fuck…" He muttered under his breath as he was forced to fight down the little surge of greed that grew inside of him upon seeing the bundles of Rapture bucks inside.
He rationalized keeping a few for the vending machines scattered around Rapture, but had to make himself discard the bulkiest of the cash to put his food and bullets inside. Survival won out over his avarice – but only by a thin margin.
It was just as he fastened the duffle back over his shoulder, swinging it to rest against the base of his spine that Atlas heard it. The nearing footfalls of the monster that rumbled the ground with every step. Glancing up sharply to the glass between him and the rest of the facility Atlas expected to see the hulking mass of the daddy nearing him, but the corridors outside remained vacant.
Time to leave he decided giving the strap another testing tug, making sure it was tight and trustworthy.
The door he'd previously sealed shut opened with little more than a hiss of steam and slight scraping of metal. He could not be sure if the beast would hear that over the distant but continually ear grating rantings of the thing that had once been Alexander Gilbert. In fact it might have even been lost of the simply melody of Raptures decay, the structure groaning and creaking as more leaks began to spring. Now Atlas did not know exactly where he was, the limited information he had painted a fairly easy picture to understand – but he himself had never been here before.
Yet when he looked around at the erosion and deterioration that crept along every wall and pipe he couldn't help but think it was worse than it should have been.
It was not a thought he dwelled on as he darted out into the hall, careful to stick to the walls and not round any corners hastily in fear he'd rush headlong into a splicer or the metal behemoth if he rushed, but it was a thought that persisted. Behind his survival instinct, behind the careful scanning of the imagined map in his mind that would need edits with every new unexpected turn he found, it was there.
This isn't right. That nagging thought. This is in too great a state of disrepair for only one year.
These concerns were easy to dismiss, after all who was to say Fontaine's little experimental nightmare hadn't gone under long before the bastard himself? Atlas couldn't afford to let his mind become stuck on that loop when his survival was on the line. So he buried it and tightened his fingers around the pistol in hand.
Up ahead he heard the scamper and scrap of skittering feet and a hook slung across the walls. Tensing Atlas pressed back against the wall. His bullets limited and gun unused Atlas was not keen to take a shot at anything if it could be helped. He'd wait for the danger to pass before continuing on. But as he waited something lightly fell against his shoulder, the soft patter of rubble falling from the ceiling. Gaze hastily turning upwards to be met with the horrid sight of a spider freak crawling overhead.
The splicer met Atlas's stare in the exact same instance and both parities rushed to kill the other.
The sharp screech of metal grated on Atlas's ears as the spider splicer ripped its hook from the ceiling, angling it for the man under it as Atlas in turned whipped his pistol up and unfaltering pulled the trigger the moment the barrel lined up with the warped body.
As the bullet tore out of the gun with a ear shattering crack, kicking a far more powerful punch than Atlas had been prepared for – loudly at that. The moment the ringing in his ears registered Atlas felt a sharp, all consuming sense of regret. He shouldn't have lashed out so quickly in an effort to kill the thing before it could gut him – he'd cost himself a clean shot and his location given away.
Beyond the faint ringing in his ears Atlas heard the thing shriek. A disgusting splat of blood wetting the ground followed quickly by the writhing splicers body with a resounding thud and slap as it fell into its own puddle of blood. It's body continued to twitch and convulse violently, the bulleting having pierced its stomach, apparently having found some poorly stitched up wound. If it was the fall or the creatures own hook that had torn it open enough to expose it's insides to Atlas as it lay writhing on the blood splattered ground he couldn't guess. Very briefly something like disgust crossed Atlas's mind. But not pity and certainly not horror – Rapture had bore far worse images to him, Atlas's hands committed atrocities more bloody and staining than this.
And again that stray thought that seemed off colour even for his jaded soul came creeping in. Walk away. Leave it to thrash and wail, it's not your problem. Hold onto the ammunition. Be clever, be shrewd, be the one that survives even if everything else fails.
It screamed again, the slick squelch of its insides spilling out as it crawled and struggled on in vain, animalistic need to survive itself, only growing louder. Soon joined by the disgusting gurgle of its panicked chokes for air. Drowning in its own blood. Atlas gave it ten minutes, at best.
He hadn't moved. The pistol still tight in his hand.
Leave. That thought persisted, almost baffled as to why he hadn't yet. Atlas himself couldn't say until sluggishly his mind wandered back to the kid. He wouldn't have walked away. Jack would never had just let this wounded beast struggle and suffer till it's last moments.
He killed, he did it more efficiently than any man Atlas had ever known. As though he'd been built with the soul purpose of killing anything hostile that came at him. But for as bloodied as Jack because – cruelty never entered the equation. Never with the sister, never with the few survivors he found – not even with splicers.
Jack would have taken that pistol and unloaded a clip into the splicer's head. A mercy delivered with brutal precision. But a mercy none the less.
Atlas turned away. He wasn't the kid. The thing he left on the ground was a wasted bullet, a tell for his location, just a monster that had failed to kill him. It wasn't worth the trouble or the risk.
"H….elp..."
It was a she.
So hard to tell with how mutated they became and with all the blood and mangled parts the splicer consisted of. But that broken, choked voice was a woman's. Had been. Splicers were hardly people. But her pathetic sniveling cry had halted his feet. Atlas stared ahead of himself, unable to identify why he'd stopped for a moment.
During the wall he'd heard begging and screaming of all kinds. Turned a blind eye to the pain of those not on his side, been deaf to the pleas of the higher class – nothing had given him reason for pause.
Even when his hand was turned on the little ones.
For the briefest moment he could feel the heat across his skin, the stench of the burning mistakes – the weight of those sins resting on his shoulders. For just a moment Atlas looked back on his own actions with all the familiarity and justification of a stranger staring upon the work of a mad man.
She croaked again, some gurgled words that lost their meaning as slowly she died, suffering to the end. Atlas's hand twitched and his shoulders tensed.
The slight scrape of his boot twisting to turn back towards the injured splicer was abruptly drowned out by an unmistakable bellowing roar and the thundering footsteps of a different kind of beast all together.
In an instant whatever mental hang up Atlas might have found was discarded and he ran without turning back. Just in time to hear one final terrified shriek and a telling crunch of bone underfoot. He didn't dare look back, the ground shaking with every step of the behemoth behind him. Instead Atlas conjured up that mental map he'd worked so carefully on earlier and followed it step for step. The metal daddy kept pace with him alarmingly well, faster than Atlas thought they could move, but he did not hear the roar of a drill at his spine nor found himself dodging throwing proximity mines. What kind of beast did Alex the Great have tucked under his thumb?
More interested in survival than the gathering of knowledge Atlas didn't bother looking to find out.
Atlas's thought process consisted only of orders, following them as quickly as they came. Three more turns, stairs – the creature growing closer with every pounding step. Another terrifying roar and a desperate jump down stairs instead of taking them two or even three at time. Atlas's knees buckled as he landed, ankle screaming in protest as a sharp pain rushed up the length of his calf. Ignore it, choose life over the pain, kick of the ground and ignore the burn. Continue running, live. A simple animal intent, Atlas moved without thought relying on his instinct to pull him through by the skin of his teeth.
As he rushed out of the stairwell Atlas caught the echo of stairs breaking behind him, the monstrous form behind him breaking through the doorway by the sound of the crash that followed after him, bits of ruble hitting the backs of his feet as he put distance between them.
There, right where the blueprints and notes had predicted – the bathysphere. Atlas would have wanted to check it carefully, would have wanted to run over every inch of the vessel looking for signs of tampering. Looking for signs of an explosive element. He'd lost most of his life in one fiery eruption with bathyspheres once; he'd not lose the rest of it with this one given the chance.
But choices were not a luxury he had at his disposal as the metal man behind him screamed again, this time firing at him. The shot narrowly missing Atlas as his hands flung up instinctively to cover his head as the heavy rivet passed him by with a sharp pull of air. The hatch was open and Atlas felt a wave of relief and blind gratitude run through him as he leapt inside, easily clearing the small body of water between the bathysphere and the solid ground. Once inside Atlas moved immediately for the controls, jerking the leaver down with enough force it seemed to bend and strain – an inch away from breaking in two. But it held steady and so did the bathysphere's design, door sliding shut with an unhurried slide – unaware of the haste it's occupant needed in that moment.
Whipping around Atlas just saw the outline of the beast that had been chasing him through the glass and mechanics as they hissed shut. And found himself shocked by how human shaped it appeared. While he was momentarily stunned by the man shaped monster – the daddy pulled up its gun taking aim again and Atlas ducked aside, again covering his head out of reflex. He heard the gun fire and bullets strike the metal mass of his only life line. The sphere shuddered and rocked under the pressure but no cracks appeared.
They were not moving. Atlas panicked.
He'd not input any coordinates, only shut the door. Despite his instincts saying to stay low in case the beast's weapons could break the glass and find their target inside, Atlas sprung back up for the controls. Anywhere he decided. Anywhere would do, he could figure it out once he was safe and so thoughtlessly slammed his hand down on the first location he saw. Anything was better than here.
The sphere kicked to life with a shudder all it's own and as if able to sense how it was rapidly losing its prey the daddy rushed forward. It's hulking form growing closer as Atlas stared out the glass paneling at it. But then they were submerging and its figure was lost under the rush of agitated water sloshing up over the sphere. The big daddy did not follow them down. They were built to withstand the watery depths but if Atlas were to put money on a guess – these ones wouldn't leave Alex's grand little shit show up there.
He was…safe.
He'd survived.
Abruptly Atlas was hit with fatigue. Stumbling back away from the window and collapsing into the comfortable but dusty cushioning of the sphere lounge. A personal bathysphere off Ryan's grid. He laughed. Breathless, wheezing and disbelieving. He'd done it. He'd given Ryan a massive middle finger.
He was still alive, wouldn't the old bastard just be so shocked if he knew.