When Tenenbaum said 'untrustworthy', Atlas hadn't quite translated that to meaning a fucking deathtrap.
The moment he took his foot off the final step and onto the second floor landing, it gave a terrible wailing creak and grind that he was sure Delta must have heard beneath him. Cringing, Atlas looked out over the floor and took note of where the largest gaps were. A few bodies scattered around made the remaining safe areas look all the more unappealing.
Being careful meant going a bit slower than he'd have liked, but Atlas didn't rush himself as he ventured out further onto the floor. Gun in hand and ADAM prickling under his fingertips.
A comforting presence, but not one he'd like to fall back on if it could be helped.
Especially when he caught the distant skittering of a spider splicer somewhere.
Those lucky bastards didn't need to worry about a rickety floor when they could just as well cling to the walls and ceiling.
And yet, despite this particular advantage, they were still dumb as a sack of bricks. As such, Atlas easily heard them before the splicer got a chance to close in on him. His steady steps had made noise, but the feverish scuttling of a spider splicer might as well have been deafening against the quiet backdrop of Rapture's decay.
The scrape of metal against the floor registered in Atlas's head and a moment later he was zeroing in on the sound. Finding the splicer still a good distance from him, coiled up tight with a hook in hand, no doubt intending to bury it in his head. Atlas beat him to that punch with a bullet.
His aim was not wholly untrue to him but neither was it a perfect strike. Atlas tutted through his teeth as the bullet found a mark on the splicer's chest just beneath its shoulder. Puncturing a lung at best. But as far as splicers were concerned, very few injuries were worth stopping for until it became fatal.
"Taking up all my fucking bullets." Atlas cursed and aimed another just as the bleeding beast took its own aim, clumsy and hasty after being shot itself, and hurled the hook his way.
Easy as it was to move out of the path of the weapons trajectory, it caused Atlas to backstep and land on one of those less than secure patches of ground. It gave a shudder under him and Atlas leapt forward again just in time to see another chunk of the floor give away. Oh for fuck's sake.
By the time he'd looked up at the splicer again he saw it attempting to retreat some. Out of hooks and still bleeding. The damnable thing was still chattering away. "Get back here!" Atlas snarled and raced after it.
Tenenbaum said clear the space and by god he was inclined to do just that.
It was not the most elegant chase in the world, the spider splicer remained more dextris than himself and light enough to avoid any major weak spots in the floor's construction. Atlas had to slow to avoid these traps himself. It felt a lot like being lead around by a child he couldn't quite catch up to.
He was also positive that Delta would not be having half as much grief as he currently was. Would be mighty useful if he had a end all conflict drill on his side. He didn't have that, but he did have the plasmid that sat under his skin just begging to be let loose.
Why not? Sure, ADAM was dangerous and using it seemed to...twist his mental state just a bit, but Tenenbaum seemed to think it was safe enough.
Fuck it.
Incinerate came roaring to life in his palm and with it the familiar rush of adrenaline that ADAM always brought with it and a sense of power that sat just a tad shy of being addictive.
Atlas planted his boots on the ground and took aim. This time when his attack struck the splicer it lit up in vibrant reds and yellows with a shriek. That stopped its running right fast. Atlas didn't even need to add another bullet to the situation as the splicer seemed to crumble under the combined damage of the flame and previous injury. Collapsing and falling as dead weight through another gap in the floor.
Atlas could only hope that if Delta happened to be walking underneath, that the splicer's body would not still be on fire if it struck him on the way down. Though, admittedly, that would at least be rather entertaining.
Straightening back up, Atlas killed the flame in his palm and glanced around. Atlas took notice of a little sister's vent ahead of him back towards the stairs. Thankfully it remained empty of one of the children, but he did notice something else. Sitting by its side was an audio diary. Atlas frowned as he approached both the vent and diary. Looking at the little thing with some uncertainty.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered to listen to one really. A little caught up in running for his life and genuinely lacking any interest in hearing dead men's voices. Not that he was given much of a choice with the ghosts on his mind.
But there was something disconcerting about seeing one left by a vent.
Something that was reserved for the little sister's safety, it seemed wrong to set someone's memories down next to it when, more likely than not, they'd become someone willing to tear those girls apart for their ADAM.
So Atlas picked it up with the intention of tossing it over the railing and somewhere down to the first floor. Hopefully this too would not hit Delta should he be lingering.
Except when his fingers closed around the handle, he noticed a name plastered along its side. Written in crayon and stuck on with little more than tape, Eleanor Lamb's name was scrawled.
Atlas looked back at the little sisters vent and his mind did its job for a nice change of pace. Made connections.
He recalled Beatrice, while still very much influenced by the sea slug in her gut, telling him about 'Big Sister Eleanor's' desire to leave a gift with the remains of Valery. That had been why Beatrice was there at the same time as himself, to leave flowers.
Sent by Eleanor.
It stood to reason that this too would have been delivered by a little sister through these vents. Were the girls leaving Eleanor's recordings around the city? What for?
Atlas did not immediately know what to do now the device was in his hands. Listening to it seemed inappropriate somehow, but what else was he to do with an audio device? He started it with a click of the play button.
"Mother found a way to rehabilitate me psychologically, but she can't remove this...this thing inside my body."
Eleanor's voice sounded too old. Atlas did not for a moment doubt that the girl he heard through the recording was only a child, but he could hear how trauma had aged her in every word. So tired.
"I look in the mirror and I see a freak. I remember very little - just an artificial sense of peace and a compulsive hunger for ADAM."
Listening, Atlas knew this must be what all former little sisters experienced in part. Except, the girls he knew that had come back from that state of living death were no longer infested with the slug.
But Eleanor was.
Lamb's efforts to rehabilitate her were not half as successful as Delta's methods. But perhaps, Atlas considered darkly, Lamb never really intended for them to be that successful in the first place.
Eleanor's voice concluded quietly with something just shy of compassion. "Doctor Alexander is trying to help me...adjust. He's responsible for part of my creation. But he wants to make amends."
Amends. Atlas thought about this with a faint scowl. There was so much blood on Alex's hands and now he was a raving lunatic that would probably want to make amends as soon as rip Eleanor's head from her shoulders. He wasn't feeling the same forgiveness that Eleanor's tone suggested she did.
How old was this recording? There was no way to know if this voice had been taken an hour before or years early. Atlas couldn't say how Eleanor might feel now but...to actually hear her...
To know the voice of the daughter he was helping Delta reach, it seemed to change something in Atlas. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but it felt more real to him suddenly.
This Eleanor, made a person for the first time rather than some obscure objective they had to reach.
With that Atlas slid the recording into his bag, there was room enough for it with the painting left behind. Atlas found it somewhat amusing that once again he was collecting something sentimental for Delta. Maybe this one would make him happy as well, even if the content was a little grim. Everything in Rapture came with that baggage now days unfortunately, even the most wonderful things.
With the diary safely tucked away Atlas looked over his shoulder, seeing a hall down to his right that lead to another chamber. The name above the door read 'Marketing Department' and, well, Alex did seem the type to put emphasis on marketing, perhaps he'd stashed the signal relay there as well.
No sooner than he'd stepped away from the vent, towards the marketing department doors, did the demon bitch herself decide things had been far too void of her own voice for her liking.
When Doctor Sofia Lamb spoke up, voice carrying over the radio waves, Atlas cringed. Wishing her gone just as soon as she showed herself.
"You collect my daughter's voice as though it were a trinket." Lamb spoke icily to Atlas directly and he knew she'd likely been watching them every step of the way from the moment she first found him in the bathysphere.
Biding her time.
Perhaps it had been a sense of insult that prompted her to speak now, seeing Atlas take something that belonged to Eleanor.
"Aye." Atlas chimed back dryly. "And I imagine we're gonna come collect her in good time too." Antagonising the woman was likely not the safest nor more mature line of reasoning in the world, but Atlas needed a pick me up every now and then.
The silence that followed was positively glacial and a sneer curled on Atlas's face. Good. Let the bitch sweat. "You ain't got no right to be calling yourself a mother of all things." He continued, poking around for sore spots while airing his own distaste for her.
What he got for his troubles was a sermon he did not ask for.
"The Tyrant," Lamb began, tone biting as she no doubt read through her mental list of cliches and speeched. "looks upon the world, saying' 'All of this is mine,' and by force or guile, he makes it so. To the Tyrant, even the -"
"Oh my lord jesus almighty." Atlas breathed out a curse, talking over Lamb's incessant yapping. So incredibly exasperated. "Do all you wacko intellectual types wax poetic day in and out? Ryan was just as bad, but at least he made some sense here and there."
Stepping up to the doors that had more of those dozens upon dozens of seized notes plastered along its frame, Atlas stopped and took a knee. He'd made a habit of ensuring he had as many bullets in his pistol as was possible before entering any new area that he was heading blind into.
And as he opened his bag back up, Lamb spoke up again.
"As I recall." Lamb interjected calmly. Her voice a steady, icy stream that Atlas would have loved to just cut clean off. "You too had a particular way with your words. The work of a shark, this 'voice of the people' parade."
"Well ya recall wrong." Atlas replied dryly, picking through the items that Tenenbaum has sent him out with. "What I did was called 'inspiring speech'. Ya know, uplifting like, or something." The words were somewhat distracted as Atlas took stock of his bullets. More than enough for a change.
"Something like that." Lamb repeated, voice heavy with a lofty smugness that got under Atlas's every nerve. As though she were mocking him over something his pitiful mind failed to comprehend because she was ever so smart and he was just some working class chump.
"But I ask you, Atlas. What do you stand to gain from assisting Delta in this endeavour?"
"Ha!" Atlas let out a bark of laughter. "Maybe you're not actually all that bright, doc. Ain't that obvious? Because Delta means out of here and the whole city is sinking, if ya hadn't noticed that."
"Strange." Lamb hummed. Never once rising to Atlas's bait. "You were once so enthused on the idea of conquering Rapture. Now you would see her rest on the ocean's floor."
"Save it." Atlas bit out the correction before he could think better of it. "To save Rapture."
"Is that what you remember of the affair?" Lamb asked, amused. "The Tyrant has no family, no friends, no country; only slaves, chained in his wake. To his fellows he asks, 'of what use are you to me?' Those who love him are his subjects, for the Tyrant accepts only worship or fear."
Desire as he did to shut the woman's usual spiel up again, Atlas couldn't find the words. Her speech getting caught in his head. Carving out a place for itself inside, as if the words she spoke were truth and they belonged there. Even as Atlas violently rejected them. Wishing to expel every sylaball from his head and forget it all together.
But once it was inside his mind, he couldn't seem to pry it back out.
"Make no mistake, Atlas. You are a tyrant."
Teeth grinding Atlas was only just able to keep from throwing his radio across the city's length. Sick of the woman's voice. Sick of the clenching in his chest and heat spreading to his fingers, begging to light up incinerate again when it had no purpose to be called upon.
He settled for turning it off.
Just for a moment. He knew it couldn't remain off in case he needed to yell for help. But just for a moment, he didn't want any other voices in his head. Just his own.
Trying to step away from the situation, Atlas rose back to his feet, adjusting his bag over his shoulders and focused on moving forward. Stepping up to the doors Atlas waited with his pistol raised for them to slide open for him.
When they pulled back and opened up the marketing department to him, Atlas only saw it for a split second before the whole scene was washed over and replaced with what he recognised as another memory out of place and time.
For the second time since entering Fontaine Futuristics, Atlas found the decay dropping away from his sight, washed clean with the shine of a ghostly memory of the beauty the place had once been. Briefly stopping him in place as he played witness to a scene long forgotten.
"How are you going to hawk these?" A familiar ghost asked and Atlas stopped in his tracks. Pistol lowering slightly till it fell off the ghost that was presented before him.
A far younger and less solid Sinclair sat to one side at the end of the long table situated in the centre of the department.
In his ghostly hand sat a glowing bottle that resembles what a plasmid bottle would one day come to be. Scrutinising it and turning the new product over in his hands. And between his translucent hold, the bottle flashed through every colour they had to name, merging and splitting in little rainbow bursts of light that the memory did not acknowledge.
"Not to say I'm uninterested, Fontaine. But people get a bit of the heebie jeebies about needles. Why'd you knock off the drinkables?"
And at the foot of the table, standing to look out the windows to the sea floor, Fontaine offered up a scoff and shrug. Cigar in hand the ghost glanced back towards his guest, the rainbow light show from the plasmid bottle bouncing off his profile.
"They were a massive drain on ADAM, limited supply you see. Leave selling the needles up to marketing." Fontaine told Sinclair flippantly, looking back towards Rapture's landscape as Sinclair mused over the new plasmid.
There was a distinct curiosity behind Sinclair's stare even in this colour sapped recreation of a moment long gone. That spark Atlas recognised well enough, Sinclair's cogs all turning as he made his own plans, thought about how to best utilise these new developments. On his young face, the expression felt entirely alien to Atlas now. Like looking back to a person he'd known in another life that no longer resembled the one he knew now. Age could do that.
"This won't come cheap." Sinclair warned Fontaine, but his tone was jovial. Knowing they'd be doing fine business and that Fontaine was prepared to pay his price.
At this, Fontaine laughed. "With you, Sinclair? No, it never does." He remarked, and Fontaine's voice held a note of laughter to it that was almost friendly. "I'll leave the gathering of those brave volunteers to you. I'm sure you'll be more than convincing."
"I'd reckon you'll have...five within the fortnight, and then we can talk about expansion." Sinclair agreed readily, turning the bottle over in his palms. "Heard Ryan has been coming down on these. Didn't think I'd see the day…" He pondered aloud and Fontaine's tone became tight in response.
"An agreement was reached between us. Don't think Ryan wanted to toss the word regulation around any, but no one wants people teleporting into their safes or to the surface neither."
"Could anyone get that far with this?" Sinclair asked, momentarily alarmed.
"Well, to know that, you'd have to supply me those volunteers."
"Can't say I don't pity the poor lads some. But no one is forcing their hands up." Sinclair sighed, leaning back in his seat, but showed no sign of hesitation in their arrangement. "But between this and the pit? Ah, might be doing them a mighty kindness."
Yet, undoubtedly, neither of them truly believed that. "I certainly won't be throwing my hand up in any hurry. No offence, Fontaine. But I'm inclined to agree with your leading lady on this one. Handing over this sort of power to these sorts of people - could get a touch nasty."
It was closest Sinclair ever came to putting some kind of moral reasoning before material gain but he fell just short of the mark and did not consider withdrawing from the deal he and Fontaine had struck. And Atlas watched, wishing that once, just once, Sinclair would have walked away. But this had already happened, it couldn't change now.
Fontaine didn't change course either. Snubbing out his cigar with a smirk.
"Never know, Sinclair. With plasmids like that? Well it might just save ya life."
"Not exactly out of my depth though, now am I, Fontaine?" Sinclair chuckled and set the bottle down on the table.
The bottle let out a little click when set down and as if it had given a snap of it's fingers, Sinclair's ghost vanished away in the sound. Leaving the chair vacant and the scene concluded.
And yet, the other ghost lingered a little longer.
Silent as if the moment in history had stalled and forgotten to take that remanent with it.
Then gradually Fontaine turned again. Enough that his shoulder was turned towards Atlas, frame bent slightly as he reached for the bottle that Sinclair's ghost had abandoned. Its colours flashing blue as Fontaine's hand lingered above its surface.
"Never hurts to have insurance, Augustus." He whispered.
Fontaine's fingers touched the bottle and then he too was wiped away. Leaving reality and the present day in place of a deal that had been struck and finished many years ago.
The little moment of history left Atlas all but winded. A slight tightness in his chest as air came harder to come by. Leaving his fingers and chest feeling cold. Every time his mind conjured up these ADAM induced nightmares, he felt thrown off balance and needed to take some time to find himself again.
This time, however, the memory was not without some physical grounding. As when Atlas looked up again, he saw the plasmid bottle was right where the ghosts had left it. Sat at the end of the long table set centre stage in the room.
Flashing through every colour in the rainbow, the bottle lay in wait.
Approaching slowly, Atlas's gaze flicked back and forth, scanning the room as he carefully ventured inside. The walls lit up with each colour the plasmid bottle threw out. A simple loop.
Blue, red, yellow, mix, rinse, repeat.
Green, purple, white, mix, rinse, repeat.
And so the pattern reset and played again.
Atlas went down the opposite side of the table from where the ghost of Sinclair had sat. The urge to speak into the radio welled up in him again.
To demand answers. Ask Sinclair what the fuck he'd been doing making deals with Fontaine about volunteers.
But he didn't want Sinclair to know. Didn't want anyone to know the things he was seeing.
They likely already thought him crazy, only just able to brush the majority of it away with ADAM as an excuse. But did everyone else feel this way? Did everyone else see the things he was seeing as the ADAM corrupted their bodies?
He felt they didn't. Maybe that was his ego whispering to him, but Atlas didn't think anything about this was particularly standard, even for a splicer in the making.
Tenenbaum would tell him if it were, wouldn't she?
Despite his desire to keep these things to himself, the need to speak to Sinclair continued to tear at Atlas.
Because he knew what he knew. Augustus was lying to him. Augustus was always lying about something. But that was fine because they were both doing the same thing. It should have been fine, at least Atlas should have been okay knowing they were using one another as usual. It should have been fine by him.
But it wasn't.
As Atlas came to stand at the foot of the table, standing with his back to the looming windows that lead out to Rapture, he finally reached for his radio. Eyes fixed firmly on the plasmid bottle before him, Atlas tried not to think too hard when he brought the radio up and flicked it back on.
"Sinclair." He spoke quietly. Waiting a few seconds to be sure his voice had to have been heard somewhere. "Augustus, you there?"
He was about to be played for a sap and he fucking knew it but...he was tired.
So very tired and the ghosts had an unfamiliar itch burning under his nerves. Something had to be done about it or he'd lose his mind and he thought maybe Sinclair was the solution this time.
A sentiment he'd never say aloud for the obvious, unfortunate pun that it would result in. The thought at least got a smile out of him, disbelieving as it was.
Seconds trickled by and Atlas counted the colour loops the plasmid bottle went through.
Blue, red, yellow, mix, rinse, repeat.
Green, purple, white, mix, rinse, repeat.
He'd reached his third when finally on his end the radio crackled, signalling someone answering him but for a moment there was no verbal response. The other person thinking.
He almost expected it to be Tenenbaum when Sinclair finally did speak. "Hit a snag have we?" He asked, ready to dive back into the usual barely concealed hostility between them. "Come to ask your pal Sinclair for a hand?"
"Can it, Sinclair." Atlas sighed, dragging his hand across his face, wishing for a shower so very badly in the moment. He could taste rust and blood too easily. "Look just...you on your own there?"
Suspicion was expected and Sinclair sounded rightly distrustful when answering. "Why?"
"Because I don't want anyone thinking I want to be friends or some shit, alright?"
That seemed to catch Sinclair off guard and Atlas waited a beat or two before continuing when Sinclair didn't interject.
"So just stay quiet and listen for a moment." Atlas began, taking a deep breath and intently watching each colour the ADAM infused bottle gave off flashing before him.
Blue, red, yellow, mix, rinse, repeat.
Green, purple, white, mix, rinse, repeat.
Focusing on that so he did not over think the words that fell from his tongue.
"We both know you're not being upfront with us. We both know that, ain't no point in arguing it, waste of damn breath. I don't remember what it is you're not telling us. Fuck, might not ever remember at this rate and I was thinking...maybe it don't actually matter that much anymore."
From the other side of the radio, Atlas heard Sinclair moving. A slight rustle of fabric and then a sharp creak of a rusted chair being pulled forward. Listening, Atlas was able to perfectly imagine Sinclair taking a seat, eyebrows pulled together in that expression Sinclair only rarely let slip of genuine bewilderment.
"I can make guesses. Hell maybe I'll even get it right if I try hard enough but here's the kicker - I sorta believe you're in for the long haul here. When you say you want to get to Delta's kid-" The same child that Atlas had really only just started to recognise as a person himself. He was slow to this part it seemed. "-I believe ya. I know we've both said and done some shitty things and it'd be a stretch to say we're good people now but...shit."
Atlas was not good at this. He knew the sentiment he wanted to express but when he tried to put it into words, everything came pouring out. All his weaknesses out on display if Sinclair wanted to mock him for it.
That mockery didn't come, instead Sinclair sighed across the radio and Atlas was struck by just how tired he sounded as well. They shared in that too it seemed.
"Not saying you're right or I agree with you here, voice. But I appreciate you saying so." Atlas was startled by how amicable Sinclair seemed, even more so that he truly believed he meant it still.
That ghost of the man in his younger years didn't represent this Sinclair at all. They were all but different people.
"Look, Sinclair, I know that you blame me for a whole lot of this shit and I know I wasn't there when-"
"Nah."
Atlas stopped abruptly. The speech he was ready to tumble into stopped in its tracks by that simple dismissal. The blue of the bottles colour pattern flashed over his eyes once again.
In his silence Sinclair took over.
"Back at the theater...I accused ya of a few things. Not mighty proud of that. Guilt makes a man do and say things he just rightfully shouldn't."
It was then that Atlas knew that Augustus was alone in this conversation. He never would have spoken like this otherwise. Raw, quiet, earnest.
"Atlas…" Sinclair muttered his name like he didn't know what to do with it, words trailing off until he was quiet for a few seconds longer and then, quieter still, Sinclair breathed. "...we are both still here."
And yet here they are. Alive and above it all. The dead beneath their feet.
Briefly a quiet fell between them. Atlas knew with the gaps in his memory he was not able to fully appreciate the weight of everything Sinclair still remembered, but he understood enough. He'd been the one trailing after ghosts.
He wondered what Sinclair would say if he were to tell him what those ghosts thought of him still…
That they requested he be kept alive a little longer.
Atlas smiled faintly and though it was a miserable sort of joy born of loss, he welcomed it in now. This was the closest they could get to repentance.
The loop hit blue once more and Atlas closed his eyes with a soft sigh. Set at ease.
With that, some of the tension bled from his shoulders. "In the spirit of not dying down here and rendering all that meaningless… a truce?" He ventured finally, unable to keep the smile from his tone. He heard Sinclair scoff in return, amused but no less strained.
"Alright. A truce." Sinclair agreed and Atlas felt a weight easing from his shoulders.
A true. That was the best they could do for now. Until they were able to be honest with one another if they were ever to reach that point and if not - it'd be enough to just not betray one another. Atlas thought he could survive with that.
"Then let's get to the surface." Atlas announced, straightening up those his eyes stayed on the mesmerising flicker of colours before him.
Blue, red, yellow, mix, rinse, repeat.
"And once we're there, we'll be free to kill one another I imagine?" Sinclair replied, the banter an easy fall back.
Green, purple, white, mix, rinse, repeat.
"You'd lose, Augustus, you know that." Atlas barked back with a genuine smirk now. "When's the last time you so much as went for a jog?"
Blue, red, blue, mix, rinse, repeat.
Appearing affronted but likely not the least bit actually hurt, Sinclair feigned insult. "Where would you have me practice cardio in a train?"
Green, blue, white, mix, rinse, repeat.
"If you stepped outside the Splicers would give you incentive." Atlas was speaking but he was not paying attention. Eyes on the bottle. The colours flashing still. Did they shift faster now?
Blue, red, blue, mix, rinse, repeat.
Sinclair said something but Atlas didn't really hear him, not paying attention.
Green, blue, blue, mix, rinse, repeat.
The colours that looped before his eyes now felt almost overwhelming. The colours were going too quick.
Blue. Blue, blue, restart, repeat.
Sinclair called. Atlas wasn't paying attention.
Blue, blue, blue-
Atlas reached out and grab hold of the bottle in a sudden snap.
The rest of the world vanished. There was nothing but blue.
Atlas was falling through it.