Demo looked more monstrous than before.
Haggard and seeming to heave with each breath, the Demo did not immediately lunge for Delta and that alone ought to have told him all he needed to know about the state Demo was in.
Delta hadn't given the result of their first encounter too much thought in terms of what it would do to the other big daddy. But clearly the fight had left the other in a poor state. Thought some efforts to undo the damage that had been done clearly showed on his armour.
The places of Demo's armour that had been shattered by the gravity well left the flesh beneath exposed and that clearly would have made a deep sea design a moot point for Demo, and so had to be repaired. The repairs were shoddily done, had Alexander still been around perhaps he would have repaired Demo to the fullest, but as it was, the patches of metal that had been welded back over those exposed points didn't match. They were all in different shades, cuts and at a glance, even made from different types of metal.
A hasty patch job that, judging by the children's drawings littering the beast's repairs, had been done for Demo by young hands.
Perhaps that was why Demo had come when called by Lamb rather than the late Alex. After all, it had come to protect Big Sister.
Demo came to protect Big Sister…or had the man underneath come to protect the child that she had grown from?
Delta's head hurt.
A dull throbbing from the base of his skull as the memories that he so often struggled to make sense of tried to come surging back up but couldn't quite break back through.
He heard Atlas speak in a voice that he didn't recognise, calling out to him to try and devolve the situation before it somehow found a way to get even worse.
"Delta!" Atlas shouted in that strange tone. "What the fuck are you doing? Leave it!"
But, of course not. Of course Delta couldn't just 'leave it'.
Between Eleanor vanishing from sight and Demo coming to stand between them, there was nothing Delta could turn a blind eye to in this situation.
Part of him wanted to follow after his daughter in some vain attempt to catch back up to her, but another part of Delta was frozen on the spot. Staring at Demo and unable to break into action the moment his successor had appeared as he had the first time they met. Now he wasn't seeing the Demo as just a frightening opponent that had him feeling outclassed.
Instead what Delta was seeing was what lay beneath the shell of Demo's armour. Underneath the metal and drugs, the man inside was someone important to him.
The haze that lay over his memories had been lifted ever so slightly after Alex The Great had showed him the final video of Walter before the man was stripped away and Demo took his place.
Delta could see Walter's face through the thinning fog over his memories. Exasperated when he looked at Johnny, an ever growing stress line between his brows as the days dragged ever closer to the final moment they'd seen each other.
Walter had known from the start where this road led. Housing Johnny was not the path of a clever or cowardly man. He'd always known that Ryan's paranoid wrath would come for them in the end.
But even now with some of the mist in his mind disapparating, Delta couldn't remember the final moments he had with Walter. There was only vague memories of the days he'd spent in the artist's studio. Rifling through musty books with worn spines, speaking words he no longer remembered, and being met with Walter's ever constant sighing and chiding. Ever exhausted with Johnny's endless stream of questions, but always patient enough to indulge him with detailed answers.
Walter couldn't answer him anymore.
Behind him Atlas cursed in that unusual voice and Delta was in no position to reprimand the man for his crude language in front of the Bea. Who was currently in Atlas's arms and crying, but Delta could barely focus on that. It was important. He ought to turn and protect the crying child, but he was stuck.
Vision blurring in and out of focus in a way that had become familiar. His chest tightened, heart thundering against his ribs as the red in his vision closed in bit by bit. Eleanor had been so close and to have her ripped away from him again had seemingly set off the ever deteriorating state of his mind.
And with Demo approaching, Delta slipped further out of focus.
Walter! He wanted to scream to the other. It's me!
By the time the first rocket fired from Demo's shoulder, Delta wasn't consciously reacting. The abrupt surge of telekinesis that came rushing up to greet the rocket and stop it in place was purely reactionary and came from the violent lack of thought that was brought on by a dying alpha's mania.
When Delta hurled the rocket back at Demo, the very last coherent thing he managed to think was a helpless plea whispered in his mind to his once friend.
Please...don't make me kill you.
The rocket struck Demo's outer shell and exploded upon impact. The force was enough to vibrate through the walls and distantly the alpha series registered the sound of a child screaming, but it was quickly drowned out by the rage's restricted focus.
It was without any surprise that the alpha watched Demo swipe up its shield, dispersing the cloud of smoke the explosion had kicked up. Rivets and harpoons didn't dent the Demo's shield, and the rocket managed to leave it only marginally worse for wear. Right alongside the dent the alpha's drill had left in it last time they met. The only parts of Demo that seemed to wear the damage of the explosion were the patch jobs and Delta narrowed in on that.
Without thought to put hesitance into his step, Delta didn't allow for the dust to settle before he was lunging at the larger beast. The sound that tore out of him didn't sound like something that ought to come from a living creature. A gut wrenching, guttural roaring that, if he had the sense to think of it, Delta might have remembered hearing from the insane alpha series that had chased Atlas.
Demo met the attack with a kind of calm that thinking creatures just didn't possess. Riot shield pulling up to meet with the brunt of Delta's charge. The impact forced the heavier monster back a few paces but otherwise did no other damage.
Up this close Delta might have been able to reach out for Demo's helmet, maybe even able to remove it. But Johnny was no more present than Walter was in that moment.
Instead Delta's drill was what flew towards Demo's helmet. With the intend to crush rather than remove.
As the two titans clashed, that left the mere mortals in attendance in the splash zone so to speak.
Fontaine had some useless welp in his arms, crying and making almost as much of a racket as the mindless killing machines at one another's throats did. The kid clung to him with distractingly distressed sobbing and Fontaine had to decide where to cut his losses and run in this situation.
Delta was more or less his only protective shield around here and now that he'd been heard by everyone left in Rapture, he needed that human shield now more than ever. Just the girl's fondness for Atlas wasn't going to cut it if Tenebaum came looking for blood.
So he couldn't cut Delta free and leave without him.
Beneath his skin the Atlas delusion must have been lingering somewhere but for right now Fontaine was the lucid party and, despite that being what he wanted, Atlas was undeniably the better suited role for this situation. Loathe as Fontaine was to admit it, he was not half the fighter that Atlas was. He didn't even pretend to understand how that had happened, the fact Atlas was tangible in any sense was still a reality he found hard to swallow.
"Fucking unbelievable." Fontaine snarled under his breath.
The pistol Atlas had taken from one of his old offices were stocked full of bullets but Fontaine knew damn well none of them would peirce Demo's shell. The memory he had of the beast's design was fairly hazy, but watching it take a rocket like little more than a slight annoyance was evidence enough that some measly little hand cannon wasn't going to cut it. Not that he could even reliably aim with one arm dedicated to holding the crying child to his chest.
Right. Best deal with that.
"Hey, kid, you listening?" he asked impatiently, giving Beatrice's shoulder a little shake when she failed to respond.
Except the girl just clung to him harder, her cries quieter but undoubtedly heavier than before. It was a little jarring that even in crying she could be more stubborn than sensible.
Swallowing down a sigh, Fontaine tried again.
"Come on, kiddo." he spoke a little more softly, voice almost lost over the chaos of the fighting that continued far too close for comfort. "We have to get going."
"But Delta…" Beatrice began, tiny arms trembling as she held Fontaine both for comfort and seemingly to anchor him. Refusing to leave the lunatic big daddy behind either.
God, children were always more trouble than they were worth.
Fontaine opened his mouth to interject and harshly tell the girl off. Delta was a big fucking boy, he could take care of himself at least long enough for them to get clear.
Except Delta was indeed a capable killing machine, one that currently acted on that design too close to them.
The sound of a rocket striking solid stone was not one that could be easily forgotten and Fontaine had heard more than a few bombs going off in his time. The ground shook with the force of the collision and ensuing explosion set of a small chain reaction of devastating chaos.
One of Demo's rockets had been redirected by Delta, the impact landing directly onto one of the support beams that held up the fucking ceiling. The sound of the stone beginning to crumble and break away was deceptively slow but Fontaine only had to spare a single glance upwards to see how far reaching the damage was.
Spider cracks raced up the length of the support beam, all the way to the ceiling where they began to extend even further and, sure enough, chunks began to break away.
He must have cursed, but the sound of it was drowned out by the thundering crash of part of the ceiling landing barely a few feet from where he and the brat were. His pistol was abandoned in a heartbeat as Fontaine scooped the girl up in both arms. Carrying Beatrice with one hand guiding her head in against his shoulder, protecting her as smaller bits of debris came raining down. The larger cement slabs came not long after the first.
A second smashed into the ground further to their right, far enough away that it didn't risk striking them, but close enough that Fontaine nearly lost his footing as the ground rumbled with the impact. Staggering he had to stay still to regain his balance for a split second. Looking up to see where the two big daddys were, still focused solely on one another.
Despite himself, anger took hold of Fontaine through the panic and adrenaline.
"Leave it, Delta!" he roared like the mindless beast could make any sense of his words in this state. They may not have even reached Delta over the rest of the chaos.
Regardless, Fontaine shouted at the man that was usually Atlas's protector. "You're going to get us killed for a deadman!" he screamed and for a moment he was sure that Delta must have heard him, because the apha series seemed to pause and look in their direction. Even as they were separated by the first section of the ceiling that fell in.
"He is fucking dead!" Fontaine continued, though the low rumbling and cracking of more of the rooms structure breaking away was growing louder. Signalling how little time there was to get clear.
"You're putting us in danger for fucking ghosts! They're gone! Focus on us!"
Ever so quietly, Beatrice tried to speak to him, but Fontaine wasn't hearing it. Trying to block her out because he knew that if he listened to her now or looked, it wasn't her that he would see.
Fontaine grit his teeth and fought against it, but the cold was nipping at his spine just as it did to Atlas. He was no more free of it than the delusion was and through the dust and debris, Fontaine knew that Delta wasn't the only one seeing ghosts.
Focus on living. That was all he had to do.
Except when she screamed, Fontaine had no choice but to look. Snapped from that brief stasis in time to see why Beatrice had screamed. Bearing down on them was another support beam that had been too weak to withstand the trembling ground and gave way. Falling towards them. Instinctively Fontaine stepped back, with how much of the ceiling had caved in, it was hard to maneuver in any given direction. In his panic Fontaine very nearly failed to get out of the way.
But as always, the icy touch of death was there to pull him in whatever direction the dead pleased. Fontaine swore he felt vice like fingers gripping him by his upper arm. Yanking him off balance. Stumbling, Fontaine glanced up to see where exactly that stumbling out lead him and immediately leant into it. Clumsily pulling both himself and Beatrice behind another pillar that he could only pray was sturdier than the one plummeting towards them.
Fontaine felt the impact as his back pressed up against the stone and flinched. Eyes squeezed shut as he held the girl in his arms tight, waiting to see if this little stunt would only serve to crush them under two beams rather than one. Blessedly the pillar they'd taken refuge behind stood strong and after a tense second of waiting Fontiane was able to let out a haggard sigh.
Around him the ceiling continued to decay and they had to get out before their luck ran out. Opening his eyes again was difficult as the clouds of dust had only gotten worse. He heard Beatrice coughing and hissed a hasty order for her to keep her eyes and mouth shut even though he couldn't do the same.
Fuck, Fontaine thought, I can't see a fucking thing.
He didn't know where the exit was anymore and even had he not been so turned around he could have been swimming down without even knowing it, there was only a small chance he'd be able to navigate through the fallen chunks of ceiling.
However, the ghosts that never truly let him rest, had not left him now either and Fontaine swore for a second he saw a long dead man standing among the rubble. Fontaine's breath caught in his throat as he stared at the man's afterimage through the haze.
When he opened his mouth to speak, the dead man's name on his tongue, Fontaine choked on the dust. He could no more call out to accuse the ghost of being another ADAM induced illusion, than he could call out for it to help them.
But when had he ever needed to ask?
"You want the girl?" A long gone memory whispered in his head. "You'll have to kill me first. If you can fucking catch us."
Fontaine heard the memory of words sneered at him and in his shock tried to look through the dust again. Met with the ghost's steely, unblinking gaze. It watched him now with as much love as the man had looked upon him in life. And it spoke no words to Fontaine now. The ghost just watched him with empty eyes then turned and walked through the dust, vanishing.
Catch us, the memory had echoed. Fontaine didn't hesitate to follow.
He'd told Delta not to chase the dead, but here he was following the steps of a man he'd put in the ground. Chasing the memory because there was no where else to go and because he was sure that the unforgiving grip that had pulled him towards the safety of the pillar belonged to the man with those hateful eyes.
Every time the ceiling gave another crack and rained down onto them, the ghost's image flickered back into sight and Fontaine was able to run after it, always avoiding danger with just one or two steps spare. Fontaine couldn't have said with confidence that the ghost was real, nor could he have said that if it were, the man it represented wouldn't see him dead on the spot. But for now, it didn't matter. For now this method kept them safe and Fotaine just ran.
He saw the door before the ghost even came back into sight. It stood by the open door expectantly. Fontaine even saw bits of rubble falling through it's form. As if to remind him of the ghost's immateriality and have him further question the damage his sanity had taken since splicing up. But none of that mattered as he and Beatrice crossed the threshold and stepped out of the worst of the carnage into a new section of rapture.
Fontaine continued to run a little further until the sounds of the crumbling ceiling were far enough behind them to start becoming muffled. Then a little further still. Until his legs began to lose their strength and he all but collapsed to his knees. Panting and still cradling the child in close to his chest.
His arms arched, his legs screamed in protest and his chest was caught between heaving with the need to get a full breath and the difficulty of calming his frantic heart. But they were both alive. A quick check confirmed as much. Beatrice was trembling in his arms and they were both covered in dirt and the odd scrape here and there, but otherwise she was just fine.
When he looked up, Fontaine saw the ghost standing before him now. Looking down on his former employer and murderer with those vacant eyes. Thoughtlessly, Fontaine pulled Beatrice in close again, hiding her away from the ghost's stare and although he himself was unaware of the protective action, the deadman's gaze seemed to follow that small action.
Something about it seemed to deeply satisfy the spirit and a distant smile crossed it's face before those glowing eyes closed.
"That was the job wasn't it?" A memory with the ghost's voice attached asked. The memory came from years ago, when Frank had still been 'Fontaine' and Atlas was little more than an idea stolen from a poster on the wall. "Protect the little ones? Well I'm doing it and I'm damn good at it."
The ghost began to fade and despite himself Fontaine began to speak. To call the man's name. "Eddie-" he tried to call but the dust was still in his lungs and the attempt gave away to a coughing fit.
Once he looked up again, they were alone again. Just he, the girl and a city full of ghosts that, for now, he could not see.