He'd thought Stanley mad.
How could he not when the guy went harping on about parties in Rapture when the whole place was corroding around them? Atlas thought him mad for thinking Ava-Marie Tate was alive. But he recognized that visage, knew the voice well enough and his gaze was filling with the well-known red of her dress.
Staring at her now she appeared as flawless outwardly, and outwardly only, as the last time she'd stood before him…when was that?
The memories did not come easily but did begin to push through sluggishly. Atlas didn't try to block them out, welcoming the return of what little he could get. He remembered a scowl, pretty features twisting up into something vicious. Words shouted but in the foggy memory the words she screamed at him were muted. Had he laughed at the time? Atlas couldn't recall with clarity, but he knew someone had laughed. Sounded wrong to him. He thought he'd been the one laughing but that wasn't his voice.
Too quickly the walls snapped back up inside his head. His skull ached. A familiar oppressive pain that pressed against the insides of his mind, trying to expand out. To keep him out of his own thoughts.
It was the trembling of the kid in his arms that brought Atlas out of his attempts to even try opening his mind back up.
They were shaking like a leaf but not trying to struggle away or run from him, so Atlas just held a little tighter to create the façade of protection. There was no safety in Rapture and very few children had ever been safe by his side – he hoped this might be an exception to that trend.
As though the theater, still filled with the hazy, vaguely human shapes, were not unsettling enough with its single focused light giving Ava the spotlight she so craved. There was new sounds now as well.
It was a sound he did not recognized.
Soft at first, nearly indistinguishable but growing louder with each second, crawling closer until the noise was sharp and focused. Clacking like two small pieces of wood being haphazardly knocked together. Then scrapping, clicking, cracking – something that sounded like splintering.
Then there came the cackling and Atlas's whole body went tense.
It was not the same wheezing cackle of the fallen creature that lay still and silent a small distance from the stage. It was higher, crisp and hysterical. Atlas nearly couldn't believe it when he caught sight of where it originated from.
Surrounded by ghosts and towering jesters, but it was the dangling puppets up above his head that had Atlas's heart clenching.
He imagined this fear born of unease to be similar to that fear people who could not stand clowns felt when faced with one. However, they had the comfort of knowing it was all make up and a fuzzy red nose. Atlas had no such luxury as one by one the things appeared up above, their wooden bones clacking as they laughed.
Strings attached them to the ceiling, but Atlas could not see where, too dark to make out where they attached and ended. But the dolls moved as if they had no restrictions. Jerky little movements that brought them ever closer to the ground. To Atlas and the child.
Realising that sitting there was no option Atlas shifted his weight. The puppets had done nothing beside assult his ears their cackling wails, but Atlas was uninterested in waiting to see what they just might do.
If it was in Rapture it likely meant to kill them.
But before he could change his grasp on the child to urge them to run or to hoist them up and run himself, he was halted by another near impact object hurtling past him. The force with which the metal beam struck the ground nearly shook Atlas and in his arms the child screamed. The bar was about as thick as his forearm, easily enough to have skewered them and with the force with which it was thrown, left imbedded and upright in the ground, it would have struck them both through with little effort. His nerves were rattled, heart rapidly pounding against his chest, it felt as though it hadn't stopped racing since he'd first collapsed, the radio's screaming static shouting accusations at him.
Maybe even beyond that, back to the beginning of the revolution. He hadn't stopped to take a breath since then. He could not afford to stop and catch his breath now either. It felt never ending.
Up about him Ava's chiming laughter sounded, taking credit for that near miss, and on reflex Atlas pulled one arm away from the kid, letting it once again burst into flames.
Only for his effort to conjure up the plasmid to fall short.
The heat rose sharply in his arm as before but never became more than a red glow under his skin and then as if you punish him, a wave of nausea rolled over him. The gut churning feeling accompanied by a hit of dizziness that might have taken him to the ground had he not braced himself against the stage before him.
It was a deeply hollow feeling that ached through his veins now. Disorientated he managed to equate it to a sensation of emptiness, like a stomach that hadn't been fed in days beginning to attack its inner walls just to have something, anything, to consume. Even itself. Now it was in his veins, causing his fingers to twitch and curl in on themselves towards the palm where the flame should have burst from.
Again Ava laughed and Atlas found himself thinking the beautiful bell like laughter to be the most hideously ugly thing he'd ever heard. The bitch.
"Looks like you're running a little thin there, darling." Ava mocked and despite his faintness Atlas forced himself to look up to meet those eyes. Violent delight dancing across the queen of the silver screen's face. "You took my lovely EDEN, but you're a starving man, aren't you? Not something that can be sated without a hit of the real stuff. Isn't that so, darling?"
Atlas bore his teeth in a snarl, the words 'I'm no bleedin splicer!' on his tongue. But he bit them back down. That emptiness in his veins whispering otherwise.
And as always, Ava was happy to be the center of it all. Crowing to the audience of faceless specters and giggling puppets, "It's no wonder Cohen closed the Fort, darlings. Theater is dead…Why play the voyeur when ADAM can make you a star?"
"You want to be a star so badly you might as well just let Stanley take his fucking photos!" Atlas spat back up at her and found himself further infuriated when her Steinman brand smile only widened.
"Oh Stanley. Always seeking out the truth, so desperate for it. Poor dear, he was sweet but insubstantial, like boardwalk candy-floss." She remarked flippantly, and Atlas was under no illusions as to how he was 'sweet'. Ava had so many men in her back pocket. Distantly his mind equated it to some name and face he couldn't recall but his mind rallied against it.
Ava used sex and drugs, that long-lost ghost had not.
But in Rapture it hardly mattered. Weak men would follow. Ava had used that as had Atlas and as did Lamb. Rapture mad monsters of men and Atlas was left to wonder if it had truly distorted him or if he'd always been so pitiless.
When Ava's purr came to him again, the words struck something inside of him "Stanley…a man who sold blood and brood – a feather of your flock, no?" She asked, leaving Atlas's insides tight and cold.
Sold blood and brood. He'd never…
Ava was uninterested in what he had to say, too busy basking in her own misplaced sense of grandeur. Satisfaction taken from her crims. "From Ryan to Sinclair...and from Sinclair to me. Mademoiselle "Sofia Lamb" was made to vanish from Rapture without a trace. My people find every photo, every news clipping, every advert...and blot her out. To blot anyone out. People think themselves solid, real, substantial. But not you. You arrive from nothing just as I made nothing of others. I find myself curious, let me know your secrets. Precious little else keeps my attention now days. So share them with me, won't you kindly?"
His skin crawled.
"Kindly go fuck yourself." He shot back just in time to see that smile distort and twist into a snarl and her arm raise. He knew an action meant to kill well enough. Pushing both he and the child back just as Ava tore a piece of the theater up like it was nothing. Plasmids, he was unsurprised and when he found her to be using telekinesis he cursed silently. But his focus didn't shift, diving out of the way of the rebar she'd thrown at him.
The movement was heavy, sluggish, with the child in his arms. He could feel her tiny fingers clutching his shirt, her trembling so violent it was a miracle her teeth weren't chattering.
It didn't strike Atlas that he'd reverted to calling the child she. A little more absorbed in the act of keeping them both alive.
Before the unpleasant conversation could kick up once again, Atlas's eyes snapped back up towards the ceiling. Those wooden creatures ever closer, too close. In a matter of seconds, they'd be upon them and Atlas's mind helpfully conjured up suggestions as to what they might do if they caught them. Briefly he thought back to the strings that had cut him up, the gashes still oozing blood and he looked to the puppet's strings with the same mix of contempt and caution.
He felt cornered. Knowing he couldn't let the child run or she'd no doubt be caught by those wooden fingers or a splicer without protection. But he couldn't protect either of them like this for long. What was he supposed to do? He always had escape routes planned out. He always had a plan-
Running a little thin.
The solution presented itself to him with all the comfort of a gun to his throat. But if the only answer was the pull the trigger then it was what he'd do. He'd come too far to stop now.
Fuck. Okay.
Overhead he heard Ava ripping up another part of the theater to try and crush him with and the shot of adrenaline the sound gave him allowed Atlas to quickly move his arms under the child that clutched herself to his chest, hauling her up off the ground and closer to his torso as he kicked up off the ground. He got no more than five running steps before the first puppets hands reached him.
He felt the boney little wooden fingers grasping at his hair but found them to be insubstantial at stopping him. Relief flooded him momentarily, thinking the puppets to not be the same looming threat as the jester and Ava.
But their cackling was louder now, littered with words here and there. He caught a few as he ran, breaking their wooden bones when they tried to grasp him. Still they laughed and spoke.
Play, one insisted excitedly. Performance, another conceded as it's fingers broke trying to grip Atlas's shoulder. Dead, one suggested and another disagreed, Asleep.
The Beast, they accused.
On that word it was like their fragile little wooden fingers became metal spikes and Atlas's run was abruptly jerked to a halt. The child he'd held so close slipped from his grasp as the puppets jerked him back.
He saw her tumble out of his arms, the clumsy attempt to keep a hold on her at least managed to make her landing less of a fall and more an awkward stumble. As she staggered back on bare dirty feet Atlas saw the child looking back and for a moment he saw her for what she was, glowing yellow eyes set deep on a scared face.
For once he didn't care. For once it just didn't matter and Atlas found himself shouting. "Kid, just run!"
If she hesitated Atlas chalked it up to fear for herself, not him. Little sisters did not feel fear for those that weren't their protectors. There was a crushing wave of relief when he did see her run out of the puppet's reach, able to pass them just as they snared Atlas but missed catching even the strands of hair on her head as she dashed from the theater.
That left him with his arms free of the girl but the puppets still held onto him. Tiny, crushing fingers biting into his body, no doubt leaving bruises. Somewhere behind him he heard Ava laughing again. No longer that tinkling giggle but something foul and feral. He couldn't face her as he tried to jerk away from the puppets.
Still they spoke.
Too many tiny voices all at once. The ghosts in the seats watching in silence and no doubt Ava closing in on him. But the words kept getting stuck in his head.
"In your head." They chattered, splitting Atlas's ears with the unintelligible screaming. Only fragments of their words, accusations, questions, declarations, came to him. "Get out. The best lies. Show your cracks. Set it straight." Over and over. The words grew louder. They kept growing louder, scrapping at the insides of his brain. Leaving him unable to find a single thought of his own.
They were drowning him in his own head. He grew smaller with every word, vanished a little more with every word that wasn't his own. He couldn't find himself in their noise and he wanted to scream but had no voice with which to do so.
There was no way to put a stop to the onslaught and it just kept going. More and more, it kept growing and he became less and less. Over and over and over and over and andoveroverandove-
Blue.
"Wake up, Atlas. You're alive."
His eyes had not opened again but behind those tightly closed lids, he saw blue. Soft and soothing. He saw blue and he returned. Once again one with his own mind and body.
When his eyes did snap back open he saw red instead and knew it was Ava closing in on him. The red glow of Ava's luminous dress neared, bathing his back in the ADAM made light and leaving his silhouette on the ground, it was only after he'd seen that clashing blue that he could see reality again. A moment of clarity among all the chaos around him.
His gaze jerked upwards towards the chattering puppets and saw for a split second what EDEN was changing for him. The puppets were little more than what remained of the fallen Jester's ribbons. How real that was and what else had been warped by the drug did not matter.
What mattered was that these puppets were not able to keep him. It was the drug distorting his mind, making him feel trapped when he could break away. It scared him how a mind could trick him so easily, to make something so fake feel so real.
Despite his return to reality, Atlas was running out of time in regard to the bitch at his back.
As the first of his restraints gave away, the EDEN's influence returning but no longer fooling him as to the nature of the puppet's strength. He broke their fingers again as he jerked away. Behind him he heard Ava screaming in anger, but even she seemed to flicker and change with reality seeping in and she seemed far less herself than he thought. Her voice not the one he recalled Ava having.
It didn't matter. Didn't matter if it was Ava, a ghost or just some splicer the EDEN had projected her onto – she still meant to kill him and so Atlas didn't go looking for answers in her.
Atlas never did like running away but he'd had no choice as of late and he tore out of the theater, the doors that had almost swung shut when the little sister fled through them thrown back open as he burst through them. All the while he fumbled with his bag. Trying to run and seek out the first aid kit at the same time.
Behind him he felt things being torn up. Heard and felt projectiles narrowly missing him, snapping at his heels as Ava's voice shrieked after him. Screaming something about the beast and redemption. Atlas knew there was no redemption for people like her. People like them.
As he ran he hoped to see the form of Delta somewhere. Sought him out whenever his gaze wasn't pulled back to his desperate seeking through his bag. His footsteps slowed a bit as he left Triton Theater. The glow of the luminous plants on either side of him as he whipped around. Seeking weapon or safety, either would do if Delta were not nearby.
It was a mistake to have slowed in the first place. He felt his body gripped by a force that had no physical presence. His mind registered the word telekinesis only a split second before that force grasped him tightly and hurled his body through the air.
The breath was knocked out of him as he struck the ground. His burnt arm lit up in white hot pain as it ground against the filthy floor of the gallery entrance that lay just beyond the theater. His body did not even have the common courtesy to hit only once, leaving Atlas to take every hit to add to the long list of injuries he'd accumulated. He could feel the cuts he'd gotten gathering up bits of debris and dirt, infection becoming a substantial threat.
When the violent strikes with the ground came to a halt they did so with Atlas's body skidding a small distance and left prone on the ground. Cringing through grit teeth he reconciled with the new wave of pain that washed over him.
Worse still he could see his bag lay a fair distance away from him. Having flown further than him till it hit the twin statues that sat at the center of the entrance hall. Some of his belongings had tumbled out, including the first aid kit he'd been searching for but from where he lay, gasping in pained lung fulls of air, he knew he couldn't reach it yet. He needed a moment to even gather himself enough to attempt crawling and he didn't have the luxury of time to waste on gathering himself.
His vision blurred in and out of focus and he wondered if he might just be concussed from that. But as his world swam he noticed a splash of colour and terrified yellow eyes. Shit. The kid was hiding behind the statue, staring at him with those wide scared eyes.
It dawned on him that the child did not seem scared of him so much as scared for him. But he knew that had to be wistful thinking, little sisters did not have the capacity to care for humans. Still when she crept a little closer he managed to raise his hand in a firm stop motion and she did.
Stay. He mouthed silently and again she did. Huddling back against the statue.
Just as well because it was not a second later the bitch descended on him. Snarling through bloodied lips Atlas managed to hoist himself up onto his knees but Ava seemed unconcerned by his attempts to right himself. Toying with him as she approached at her own pace, smiling like the cat that had already caught the canary between her fangs. She just might be right, Atlas didn't see an easy out for this. His gun had perhaps one bullet left, his bag too far to reach and his veins empty of ADAM.
To say the situation was bleak would be generous.
"Do you not enjoy my happy hunting ground, voice of the people?" She mocked, and Atlas didn't offer up an answer. Not feeling up to bantering with the red bitch.
However, he did feel as though this was going to be a short experience. Already he could see the ADAM flowing through Ava's veins as her fingers twisted and curled, chunks of cement following the movement and rising till they danced around her shoulders.
Despite knowing it was futile, Atlas raised his gun. It was a quick movement, but Ava was not troubled by what was probably a considerable head injury and the gun was knocked from his hand with a violent smash as a rock collided with his hand.
Atlas felt something snap.
Biting down a scream he dropped the fractured hand down to be cradled by the other. From the corner of his eye he saw the little sister's hands snap up to her mouth, likely swallowing a scream of her own.
But Ava was too busy basking in her victory to notice the child. Even as the girl began to ignore Atlas's wishes and crept forward. He didn't risk barking at her not to. Kept his gaze on Ava as best he could all the while being aware of little hands reaching for his bag.
"Naughty, naughty. You didn't sign the waiver."
Anything he might have said in response to Ava's mocking would have come off as weak, childish even. He had no clever retort and so said all he wanted with his eyes and if looks could kill this would have been no fight at all.
Ava began to approach him, those pieces of metal and rubble still circling her body, ever ready should her prey decide to get high spirited on her. "Don't be like that, darling. We used to get along so well. Don't you remember the fun we had?"
As a matter of fact…
Atlas did not enlighten her. Kept his silence and his scowl. Ava looked both disappointed and irritated by his locked tongue. "You are the beast wrapped in layers. I'd be doing you a favour by stripping them from you. Why fight who you actually are?"
They crossed over into splicer ranting territory for all Atlas cared. She was just another lunatic that happened to have retained a pretty face. Which…now he thought on it, had to be a result of the EDEN. He did not attempt to imagine how grotesque she might be without that pretty drug to colour his vision. She was ugly enough inside to make her pretty outta shell equally repulsive.
Just as Ava's patience seemed to have reached its end, they both heard the sound of something scrapping across the ground. The two adults were taken off guard by the sound, turning towards its source and Atlas felt his heart seize up in his chest. For the first time since this all happened – it was in hopeful disbelief.
Clattering towards him was a glowing vial of EVE, a medical hypo. The sister had tossed it towards him.
His body sang in relief knowing that the needle would take some of the ache away but Atlas's mind screamed with violently excited glee because what was more important was that the needle would give him exactly what he needed. It would set him free.
Ava seemed to have failed to understand what happened, but Atlas didn't hesitate. Lunging for the vial and by the time Ava's mind caught up and she screamed, the needle was already plunged deep into his arm and the moment the first drop of EVE entered his system – even if it was designed to heal – his skin came alive again with the crackle of fire.
Now shrieking like a banshee, Ava threw her hands about her head, upheaving a massive piece of stone, some broken statue by the look of it. The pieces of metal and cement came crashing towards him along with the massive stone bolder. But Atlas had never gotten to his feet so quickly. Moving aside of the projectile with ease. Thought when it hit the ground it nearly shook his balance out from under him.
Not enough to stop him from lining up a perfect shot. All it took was a firm swing of his hand and the burning embers that gathered shot out towards the witch. He saw it hit with satisfaction as that pretty, made-up hair began to burn. Her skin blistered quickly, ruining what had once been a lovely, poisonous face. Atlas found this to be an improvement to her face in fact.
Seemingly Ava had lost all her ability to appear coherent or rational, screaming and tugging at her hair as she flew off the handle. Her pained shrieks becoming raged filled ones once again. Always had been a sore loser and she rarely every lost. She should have known better, he always got what he wanted as well while she had never managed to get him. Time changed nothing about that.
"You wretch! You liar! You two-timing little-! Y-You….you faker! You don't even exist!"
Atlas heard something wrong with her screaming, that voice that wasn't her own bleeding through, but he didn't stop to attempt to decode it. He didn't care about anything besides shutting her up. No matter who she might or might not be.
Apparently having reached her sanity's end Ava began to glow. Well and truly glow. Red lights licking up off her skin, burning around the tattered fabric of her dress, flaring up all around her. Right down to her very eyes, she glowed a vibrant, violent red. Atlas had never seen anything quite like it and when she failed to explode out of existence like a Houdini he realized that it was a plasmid he sure as hell did not know. Some part of him knew it couldn't have been a plasmid at all, it was something else at play. Maybe the EDEN, maybe his fractured mind – but no matter what it was, it would still no doubt spell disaster for him if he allowed it to.
And when that light pulsing from her very skin began to ball up and form in her clawed fingers not unlike how his incinerate formed against his own palm. He knew something meant to be thrown when he saw it and Atlas wasn't about to test out how hard it hit.
Especially when he glanced back and saw the scared little girl still clutching her bag to his chest. He had to shield her and himself. Running not an option this time.
The glowing display might have tripped someone else up but Atlas's mind was buzzing, moving so quickly that he barely even understood himself what was happening until his hands were doing it. Grabbing hold of what looked like a broken door, a heavy slab of metal that had once been used to seal off valuable parts of Rapture but now lay useless on the ground. Atlas picked it up like it weighed nothing.
Ava threw her red while Atlas reached out for the girl that had given him his second chance and pulled her sharply behind both him and the make shift shield. The impact of Ava's onslaught of colour pushed Atlas and the shield back, but neither gave. The heavy metal shook against his forearm, hurt to keep in place, but it did not break away under the pressure.
But the pressure did not let up.
To Atlas's horror it kept bearing down on them. Not so much a ball of fire as it was a flamethrower keeping them pinned. Shit…shit.
He needed time to think! He needed time, he needed….fuck he needed help.
The thought struck him so harshly that it nearly toppled him over where Ava's attack had initially failed. He needed help. God he truly needed help. In his head he could hear himself screaming the words where his prideful tongue refused to do so.
At least that was until the child he was guarding behind his back screamed. The sound a sobbing cry of fear he sometimes heard when a big daddy went down. But when that happened Jack had always helped them up, comforted them and returned them to their rightened state.
Jack had helped them. Jack had helped him.
But there was no Jack now and Atlas desperately needed that help again.
"You only ever needed to ask."
Then that same calm voice he'd heard in his mind came rippling back through Atlas's awareness. The woman's voice came with crystal clarity as though it had been spoken by his ear.
It felt like there was something cool at his back, a soothing hand between his shoulder blades and when it faded he saw blue again. Saw it step on past him and the shield, flecks of the red that bounced off the metal between him and what would likely be death, sizzling out when they hit the blue figures flanks.
He recognized that form. It was a illusions shape. Not the first he'd seen but perhaps the first that seemed to be to his benefit.
"I think that's quite enough of you, bitch." The ghost spoke, calm and cold. Not to him. "Would you kindly fuck off."
The violent onslaught of red was wiped away with a single wave of the hallucination's hand. An outpour of watercolour blue racing along the red tendrils to their source. The witch shrieked, an enraged screeched that echoed around every corner of Atlas's mind. But as the blue reached its fingers the woman body began to shred. Blue cracks snaking up from the first point of contact until she was shattering, exploding from within with a vibrant burst of blue.
Just like that the illusion was gone. Leaving behind something more pathetic in its place.
Atlas blinked, vision hazy but able to make out the stumbling shape of someone else entirely. A scrawny, erratic looking body where Ava's had once been beginning to crawl and then stumble up to their feet to run. Dashing right out of Atlas's sight but his mind was still too jumbled to make sense of what or who he'd seen in Ava's place.
As the red settled and faded away, the remaining blue figure turned towards the crouched, panting man at its spine. EDEN didn't so much dope people up as it seemed to create their own little world – Atlas could have done without the physical side of it all. He wondered if this was normal for all people who took the drug and then immediately decided it wasn't. There'd have been much more talk about it had it done this to everyone.
It was something about his head that warped it so violently. He was unsure as to what that said about him that he did not already know. His own mind was no friend of his.
His savior or his delusion smirked as she took a good look at the beaten revolutionary. Peering at him closely and it was then that Atlas realised she wasn't solid. He could see through her if he looked hard enough. A ghost. Not unlike the ghost of the arms dealer he'd seen up in the projector room.
Wasn't his mind just full of all kinds of absurdity?
The ghost tossed him one sardonic smile and glance towards the child huddled behind him, the smile softening somewhat as it seemed to reach those dead eyes right before the blue form flickered and vanished out of existence. He strangely wished her back, but he did not know how to call to the dead.
With the illusion gone, the city turning quiet devoid of any puppets chattering or wicked women's laughter, it left Atlas alone with the girl, panting and still crouched behind the shield they no longer needed. But he didn't set it aside, didn't move at all. His bones ached and for a moment he just needed to be still, to gather himself properly.
For the first time in what felt like years, he took a breath.