Hi everyone, Mal here.
My surgery went well! So yay. :
Unfortunately the recovery hasn't been going swimmingly and I have already announced a soft hiatus.
I don't plan on stopping TPS at all, I'm just going to scale back on the obligations I have across the board. So like with all my projects, writing will continue at its own pace.
I hope people can understand and honestly my emotional and physical state has already made chapter updates on TPS few and far inbetween, so this likely won't actually look any different to how it already looked. Fingers crossed I guess.
On the bright side, I'll eventually also be releasing a 4th section of TPS that focuses on our favourite sweater wearing baby boy. So that'll be something to look forward to.
Anyway, stay safe my guys.
...
...
At first, Atlas had been concerned that he'd be sent out blind on this little quest without a means of keeping in contact with Eleanor.
From experience any time his communication was cut off, be it to Jack in Cohen's little madhouse or being separated from Delta underwater - it ended poorly for him and was more than a little anxiety inducing. Having to go looking for this new outfit for Eleanor without guidance felt like he'd be running around in the dark.
However, when Eleanor reassured him that this would not be the case, Atlas had been comforted for all of five seconds before the explanation of her plan came in full. Then he felt a familiar sickening feeling rise in his gut instead.
"Not a chance, sister," he bit out harshly when Eleanor presented him with an all too tempting needle. "Not going to touch a drop o' the stuff. No way in hell."
This seemed to puzzle Eleanor who looked from Atlas down to the plasmid she held in offering.
When Atlas had asked in alarm what she was even trying to get him to take, the answer left him more disgusted when before.
Eleanor was attempting to give him a plasmid designed specifically to summon her.
A plasmid made with the very simple purpose of dragging Eleanor back to the side of whoever used it.
"Three guesses as to who decided that ought to be made," Atlas bit out furiously and decided that Lamb deserved at least as many blows to the face as Fontaine did.
Eleanor did little more than shrug.
"But mother does not possess it, now does she? No. We are giving this to you so that we can still communicate while you're out there. You may not be able to summon us from here, but at least you may ask for direction until the suit is reassembled. It is well worth the slight pain of injection."
Eleanor's only hesitation came before she went on to quietly admit. "It will… ease our nerves to know you are not dead while we await your return. So think of this as a favour to us."
Atlas did not believe that it was much of a favour. He also was not sure that Eleanor grasped the severity of the ability she would be handing over. It was little more than a means to summon a tool with or without her consent. It was just another chain to join the many that must have already invisibly wrapped their way around her throat.
Surely Fontaine would have done many heinous things to have such a tool in his arsonal that worked for Jack. Atlas, in turn, felt revolted that such a thing was being offered to him now.
"Doesn't that….doesn't that mess with your head? Even a little?" Atlas asked, imploring that Elanor perhaps notice just how vile a concept that was.
To be summoned by a plasmid through ADAM, like a pet monster.
Well, perhaps he ought not talk with how his own existence had been dredged up from the depths of a ADAM filled needle.
"Are you asking if we recognise the abhorrent nature of our existence or the detestable existence of this plasmid? Because yes. Of course we do. But we work with the horrors we've been dealt, Voice. And this plasmid could very well save your life and ours. We do not turn our nose up at things that we need to survive."
"How utilitarian of you…"
"Perhaps, but it is also simply pragmatic." Eleanor argued levelly, keeping the plasmid held out to Atlas in wait.
Still he refused to take it.
Even as something itched along his fingers, urging them to twitch shut around the offered vial. To take until there was nothing left to take from the ADAM reserves. To take far more than just from what Eleanor offered.
He did not know where his own desire began and Fontaine's influence ended. Atlas couldn't be sure he would ever find that line and he dared edge no closer to it.
"What we need to survive might also happen to kill me…or 'undo' me I guess. Fontaine sure as shit won't help you if I'm gone."
For a beat Eleanor was quiet, looking right through him and he couldn't pick out what expression might be worn beneath her mask.
"You make a lot of assumptions for a man that doesn't even know himself," she announced evenly, and went on before Atlas could snap at her to explain such a comment.
"But you will be fine. There's space yet left for you. Believe us. We know about space and sharing. Take the plasmid, accepting our plasmid might lend him more space, but without it you'll both die. You need to learn how to survive without overindulging."
"Gee. Thanks for the lecture. See you got that habit from your maker."
"No less so than you gained your foul temper from yours. Shall we get on with it, Voice?"
Atlas glared between Eleanor and the plasmid a few more times before relenting with a hefty sigh. Reaching out to take the vial with a bitter frown. He recalled Edmund seeming to approve of his refusal to touch ADAM, but here he was taking more ADAM regardless.
Every step towards survival felt like another inch closer to an inevitable grave no matter what he did. Still, it wasn't like the city or he was likely to survive more than a few more days at this rate. Might as well do some good in that time even if it meant burning the candle at both ends.
"For the record, I don't like this idea and I think it's shit."
"Duly noted."
If they ever did happen to meet again, Atlas was going to have some words with Delta about his daughter's attitude.
As Atlas went about opening the vial and fishing out a needle for the injection, his bag opened up enough to reveal to Eleanor a matching container to the one she'd just handed over and appeared surprised.
"Is that...the teleport plasmid? We thought…Did you not already use that? We thought we saw…"
Atlas hadn't thought Eleanor saw him during his little trip throughout time and space. However, he also hadn't known she was a well trained and equipped killer, no doubt she would have broken his neck had he managed to touch her back then. Well, smaller mercies.
"Free trial period. Courtesy of my bad fucking luck," Atlas groused as he cast the unstable plasmid a furious look.
Piece of shit had remained in his bag, untouched, for so long he'd almost forgotten it was there. It had become something of a constant, like it just belonged in his bag.
"You're keeping it despite your protests to ADAM consumption? Seems a little… counterproductive, don't you think?"
"Yeah, well…" Atlas paused and sighed, the needle of Eleanor's summoning plasmid pressing against his already scarred arm.
"Never know when you might feel the need to make another bad decision because someone damn well asks you to."
And he made one more as the metal pushed under his skin, into his vein and the plunger went down.
Pain was an old friend that Atlas hadn't quite been able to cut out of his life and it came to visit once again. But the shot of fire through his blood was nothing new and he knew it would not kill him. So he tried to muffle his screams and grit his teeth through the burn. It would fade in time and he hoped that it just didn't take too much of him with it when it went.
The shift between himself and Fontaine barely even registered for Atlas.
Even less so for the part of him that would name itself 'Fontaine'. As the moment it began to resurface, Big Sister interjected.
Swiftly, her hand whipped out through the bars and gripped the divided man's jaw viciously. Squeezing until the fragile bone beneath began to ache with the promise of a break should she apply even the slightest bit more pressure.
The con man opened his mouth, taking in a sharp breath but whatever he was going to say got silenced with a level command from Big Sister.
"No."
And when Big Sister pushed the body back, Fontaine fell far further into the dark than Atlas did. Perhaps even by his own volition as of who was doing the pushing, leaving the remaining lie to land flat on his ass with a small yelp and curse of confusion.
"The hell was that all about, huh!" Atlas demanded furiously as his head swam and his already bruised rear began to ache all over again.
"Establishing boundaries." Eleanor replied simply, making a small show of dusting off her hands.
"Now, up you get. Time is not our ally, Voice."
And really, when had it ever been?
…
…
Rattled as Atlas had been after taking on another plasmid that he'd been so sure would force him into the backseat of his own mind, he found that actually using the plasmid came surprisingly easily.
Passively even, and he began to worry about something else entirely.
"Am I going to be hearing you in my head for the rest of my life?" Atlas asked as he inched his way through the dilapidated remains of what he thought must have been more experimentation chambers.
Despite thinking so, the environment was in such a state of decay that he could hardly tell anymore. Large sections of the ceiling and walls had collapsed and the level of damage he was working his way through spoke of purposeful destruction rather than simple disregard and abandonment. He could even see holes in the few remaining walls that stood upright, and those gaps looked suspiciously like something had put a fist through it.
"Unlikely," Eleanor's calm voice replied, echoing in his head but audible to no one else in the world. "Once the ADAM in your body depletes, this too will stop."
She was assuming an awful lot about his condition. He was fairly sure that once the ADAM finally left his system, however long something like that might take, he'd just collapse without it to fuel him.
Tenenbaum had once told him that he wasn't going through ADAM withdrawals, that it wasn't breaking down his cells in the same way it did to so many others. But his fortune was simply so poor that he didn't expect that one lucky break to last long.
So yes. The rest of his life then.
Sighing Atlas tried not to focus on his precarious and unlikely future, instead narrowing in on the job at hand if only to distract himself for a little while longer.
"Sure, whatever ya say. Give me a bit o' that promised direction here, sister. What am I looking for exactly? Never seen a 'big brother' suit before."
"You have," Eleanor corrected. "When it was still an imitation of a Rosie's suit."
"What?"
Atlas balked as an unpleasant flash of memories pushed through his thoughts. Each one tinged with fire and lightning at the edges, the scent of ADAM heavy in the recollection of the last time he'd encountered Jack.
"That old thing…?"
Sure it probably offered Jack better protection than that old sweater of his had, but compared to the sharp and deadly design of Big Sister's suit it hardly seemed to be an upgrade.
"Dr. Alexander took it, what was left of it at least, when Point Prometheus was ransacked. He took it as…. A muse maybe? His science always did seem more like his art."
If Atlas had to meet one more fucking artist from Rapture he was going to seriously consider taking them up on their hobby of using blood as paint.
He kept those more questionable thoughts to himself of course. Best not to see if Eleanor had the same shrink compulsion as her mother dearest.
"Perhaps he believed Rapture's son would return for it one day," Eleanor suggested thoughtfully.
Although it was clear from the pitying smile in her tone that she thought this just an extension of Alex's madness. Jack wouldn't come back to Rapture for any reason, bar being dragged down kicking and screaming.
"Regardless, Big Brother's suit was designed as the armour of a…. conqueror, might be the correct word. Designed to destroy rather than protect."
A concept that Jack would have no doubt taken exception to.
"Didn't design it with the user's personality in mind, huh," Atlas grunted as he heaved away another slab of debris, wanting very dearly to be out of this place. Convinced it might just collapse on him at any moment.
"Wasn't that how he was originally designed? To be a champion against Rapture's 'tyrant.'"
"Hey," Atlas interjected sharply. "The less we talk about your crazy ma's philosophy on tyrants, the better."
For a short time this kept Eleanor quiet.
It was likely pretty obvious that the question touched a nerve in Atlas and was better off left alone. He didn't appreciate feeling like he was being treated like a volatile child, likely to have a tantrum but… well shit if it didn't feel just a little true.
Sighing, he tried to reignite some sort of rapport between them. "I could still use a bit of direction about what I'm looking for. Even if it might seem obvious."
What he was looking for, as it turned out, was exceedingly obvious.
It was the helmet he came across first.
Atlas had almost expected to find the parts of the suit being carefully guarded under lock and key, but instead it seemed as though someone had tossed it aside some time ago and forgotten all about it. Leaving the helmet to go overlooked by the others that passed through, just another piece of junk in a city rapidly turning to rubble.
However, to Atlas it stuck out like a sore thumb.
It was smaller than he expected. Welded into a shape more akin to the sphere of the Big Sister suit. Although it didn't share in the almost perfect circular smoothness of that design. It was clear it derived its appearance from a rosie suit and not a bouncer.
The lights in the helmet were dead but he knew that once it was in Eleanor's hands and they came alive, the three portholes would be far eerier than her singular, striking spotlight stare.
Carefully he picked up the helmet, surprised by the weight of it. It looked new. Dust covered, yes, but without so much as a scuff on its surface. Clearly this was not an original part of the suit Jack had worn when facing Fontaine at the pinnacle.
A 'muse' Eleanor had called it.
Atlas wasn't sure about that, this thing looked like an entirely new monstrosity to him. Something caught between Big Sister's sleek suit and a Big Daddy's armour.
Swiping away the thin layer of grime that had settled atop the metal, Atlas wondered if Jack would have don this thing just to face off with, arguably, his creator had it been available to him at the time.
Then he scoffed at himself. What a silly question, of course Jack would have.
A conqueror in heart he was not, but a defender he most definitely was.
From the day he was born he'd been a little survivor that only ever served others. If the helmet meant the difference between success or failure in protecting Tenebaum and the little sisters - Jack would have worn any garment.
Now Atlas was tasked with taking the get-up back to Eleanor in the hopes she would prove to be a similar champion for him.
"Voice?" Eleanor enquired as Atlas stuffed the helmet under his arm, grunting softly as already his muscles began to ache with its weight.
"Aye, I got ya crown," he replied quietly. "The rest of the dress won't be as heavy as this thing I hope."
Eleanor's answering laughter was hardly reassuring.
...
…
Storing parts of the suit turned out to be easy enough.
In a rare turn of good fortune, Atlas had managed to find himself an old, busted up pneumo tube.
The thing was long past its useful life, but still acted as a fairly easy landmark to find his way back to and happened to double as a storage unit for the parts of Eleanor's new suit as he found them.
The helmet was the first thing Atlas brought to the pneumo tube and initially he was skeptical as to how useful his new container would be. Had the top of the tube not been broken to the point it could be lifted clean off, he'd have had absolutely no luck in trying to store the helmet.
Trying to stuff the large, heavy helmet through the main slot of the old mailing tube would have been a bit of a humiliating sight, even by his currently severely lowered standards.
Finding the second part of the suit was marginally more difficult than the helmet.
Whoever had been tasked with hiding or storing the bits of a would be Big Brother suit, must have been so jacked up on ADAM that they didn't even comprehend what storing or hiding even was anymore. Because the core of the suit, the 'dress' as he and Eleanor had dubbed it, was set out on clear display. Neither hidden nor stored correctly, but positively covered in the red glow of security cameras.
Cursing under his breath as the four lenses of the camera's whirled back and forth, Atlas checked in with Eleanor once again.
"Don't suppose it would do us any favours to let your old woman know I'm down here, huh?"
"Assuming she doesn't already know."
"Optimism, I love to see it, sister."
Irritated by Eleanor's constant, flatlined rationality, Atlas returned to looking into the camera littered room. It was little more than some old locker room with a leaking pipe hidden somewhere, ever so slowly flooding the tiled floor. Deep sea suits and deserted personal items littered the open lockers and damp floor.
Among the abandoned belongings sat Eleanor's dress.
From his position half hidden behind the doorway, with a considerable distance between himself and the suit, Atlas could still blatantly see that the bodysuit lacked many of the hallmarks of Rapture's Big Daddys.
The bodysuit was far more metal based than Atlas would have expected, only just able to see the mesh beneath that held it all together. The Big Daddy suits that Atlas had seen predominantly made themselves up of leather and thick fabrics.
Even the traditional bulky rustic hues of the Big Daddy suits were done away with, leaving a silver chrome sheen to the metal plates.
"Took some creative liberties, by the looks of it," Atlas muttered under his breath.
Trying and failing in his attempts to avoid envisioning Alex fawning over this new creation that he'd been making with Jack as his muse. It simply made Atlas uncomfortable to think of that man doing anything with Jack in mind.
He almost asked Eleanor if the suit might be a bit heavy for her before realizing exactly who he was talking to and caught himself before he handed her an opportunity to mock him. Really the only one that might have trouble with its weight would be him when he had to undergo the arduous task of dragging it back to the pneumo tube. But to even get to that particular chore, he had to deal with the ever watchful gaze of the security cameras.
With no better options at his disposal, Atlas sighed once before allowing the EVE beneath his skin to pulse to life in a swirl of highly pressurised air. Between the summoning plasmid and his almost flippant use of Sonic Boom, Atlas wasn't sure he could really claim he was avoiding ADAM use all that diligently.
All he could do now was think, let's just get it over with.
The glare of each camera was not too hard to extinguish. With Rapture's ruins providing ample ammunition for anyone willing to throw stones Atlas only had to gather up a small collection of cement slabs to hurl into the glassy camera eyes. Shattering them till the light blinked out or taking the security camera right off the wall. Not one of them reacted to the destruction of one of the others, leaving them as more of an annoyance in Rapture now that people could throw fire and lightning around the place or, in Atlas's case, random bits of debris.
It was hardly the refined sniper-like usage of a plasmid that he'd seen Delta and Big Sister use with their telekinesis but hell, if it got the job done, who was he to complain about crudity?
Shaking off the last of sonic boom's lingering sensation Atlas checked his palm for any new marks or abnormalities from the plasmid use to join his existing scars.
For as unpleasant as his first experience with sonic boom had been, he could appreciate that it's usage didn't warp his flesh in the same way something like swarm did. He shuddered to think about it. At least he could say with confidence there were no bees nesting somewhere in his body.
"Got that little idea from your old man. Although his is more fancy, damn show off," Atlas remarked as he stepped into the ruins of the camera's, sneering as he enjoyed a short moment of self satisfaction.
An easy win was a win nonetheless, and he was in desperate need of a couple.
Eleanor's voice was quiet when she replied with a far away sort of longing to his comment on Delta. "As did we. At least...in part. Father's use of harpoons is not quite our… style."
No, Big Sister's style was to damn near bring an avalanche of water and stone down on someone. Atlas did try not to think about that particular aggressive display of control over ADAM that had nearly flattened him.
Instead he chose to focus on what such a comment from Eleanor meant, "You been watching him?"
"Since we were a little sister, yes. As much as we could. Father figures are important role models for us, yes?"
"Wouldn't know, sister. Never had one myself," Atlas drawled as he eyed up the 'dress' frowning when picking it up and finding it was just as heavy as he expected. Now he'd have to drag the blasted thing back to the pneumo tube again.
At the very least the retrieval of the body suit wasn't too dangerous. Atlas was beginning to become suspicious of the lack of splicers and Lamb's cronies. He could only think that their attention must be directed elsewhere if it was so quiet down here and there were precious few things that could be keeping them busy besides the train.
With that thought ever present in the back of his mind, Atlas got on with the task at hand. The sooner Eleanor could move freely, the sooner he felt the train and those inside would be off his mind.
The task at hand remained suspiciously quiet and void of splicer shaped obstacles. However, their absence only made Atlas more jumpy with every little slang and clunk heard in Rapture. Many of which came from the strange silvery body suit he collected for Eleanor. The more parts of the Big Brother armour he collected the more unusual it seemed.
The look and feel of a Big Daddy and, in turn, Big Sister was all very uniform in a sense. Their deep sea diver look fit Rapture given they were, quite appropriately, at the bottom of the ocean. But the thing he pulled together bit by bit for Eleanor looked more like it was made with an entirely different voyage in mind. One that went up above the clouds rather than deep beneath the waves.
Atlas would have asked Alex exactly what illicit goodies he must have been smoking when coming up with this design, had the man still been alive.
As he stopped by the pneumo tube once more to drop off a pair of new boots that he was quite alarmed to find were just as heavy as the damn helmet and dress, Atlas decided to address something with Eleanor. Just a small thing that had been nagging at him during their now frequent and lengthy conversations.
Dusting his hands off after depositing the boots, Atlas began, "So, what's with the collectivism, sister? Not got something to do with your mama dearest harping on about the good and the many and all that getting to you, I hope."
Eleanor laughed at this. A quiet, airy chuckle that he might have taken some exception to were he not sure she could break him over her knee if she so desired.
"Only as a byproduct," she explained calmly, willing to indulge his rather rude curiosity for the time being.
"Mother has some grand ideas about our future and our… unity. After a while it became a bit too difficult to think in terms of the individual. There's still a… me, here. But there's so many that are not a 'me' that eventually it just became easier to think of us as we were."
"I'm sure you understand the difficulty of the self, Voice. With only two being such a chattering in your head, I'm sure you can imagine what a great many might feel like."
After a beat Eleanor went on to ask in a flat tone. "Does it bother you?"
Atlas couldn't help but let out a bark of laughter at the thought of this being the weirdest or most discomforting thing he had to process in Rapture.
"Not at all, sister. If that's how ya want it to be, I'll adjust. Really not the strangest thing in Rapture. Still… real fucked up of your ma to put you through it."
Much like he had laughed at the minuteness of this situation, Eleanor offered a soft breath of laughter as well.
"It is not the worst she has given us. To be frank, we're not entirely sure she actually gave it to us at all. Just made it easier to comprehend. It's actually quite...agreeable.."
Yeah, Atlas would bet and if he didn't haul their ass out of here, it wouldn't be the worst Lamb did to them either.
For now he settled for a simple concession. "Well if it makes ya comfortable."
And nothing else was said on the matter.