She screamed again and Atlas turned with a curse.
It wasn't as though his short lived life wasn't littered with bad decisions. Why not make one more that might just save him from feeling another ghost weighing him down?
With feet pounding against the tiled floors, Atlas found himself soon chasing after the cat he'd found staring at him earlier, though he hardly needed to follow its lead as the sounds of a struggle grew louder with every step he took. He'd have never gotten lost when following the manic cackling or desperate screeching.
However, no matter how bone chilling the sounds of splicers locked in a life or death struggle might have been, it was no preparation for what Atlas actually found.
The small cluster of dead cats the room prior were no real warning to the carnage he stumbled across then.
There was no use trying to count how many small bodies there may have been in the room at one point before his arrival. Too many of them had been broken and ripped into far too tiny pieces that Atlas could not look at directly for fear his stomach would turn on him.
Those that remained whole enough or still produced soft sounds of distress were the only ones that could be reasonably counted. However, even they were difficult to take stock of, littered about the room as they were.
Downed with broken bones or bleeding wounds, the remaining cats were unable to do much more than yowl in desperate protest as the splicer, that must have been as part of the colony as the rest of them, was pinned beneath a much larger beast. The only one that seemed able to stand on its own two feet anymore was the cat by Atlas's feet, its back arched with black fur on end and hissing violently at the sight.
That same cat then made a dash for the female splicer like it thought it could actually do something and all at once Atlas knew exactly why there were so many little corpses scattered around.
Family came first and every single one of them had done the exact same thing as the little black cat in front of him. Atlas saw all too clearly through the results of the other little creature's efforts what fate would befall that last cat as well should it get any closer.
On instinct Atlas reached out and caught the little idiot before it could try putting itself between the tiny, broken splicer and the beast atop her.
For his efforts he earned a large gash across the cheek, courtesy of the wriggling little shit's claws as it lashed out at him in a panicked frenzy. No more expecting to be grabbed from the air than Atlas had meant to snatch it up.
Atlas cursed aloud as a sizable splash of blood spread across his face and dripped through his fingers, onto the floor.
He, quite reasonably, dropped the unruly cat.
Fortunately, it seemed to have come to some of its senses after his ill thought out grab and darted to the closest other cat rather than into the centre of the whole mess.
Had Atlas not been preoccupied checking his newest scrape, he might have taken notice of how dutiful the cats were to one another and the feral splicer even now. ADAM had done little more than encourage an already existent bond and there was little to no chance that splicer or cat would abandon the other now. No matter how futile their efforts to protect one another were. That much was clear from the carnage.
Inevitably, his loud swearing drew the attention of the feral beast that sat hunched over its caught prey.
As it craned its hulking head around towards him, its jaw fell, unhinged, revealing rows of mismatched, bloodied teeth. A piece of unswallowed flesh still hung messily down from its jaws. Then the beastial splicer produced a gutteral sound from deep within its gut. Screaming a warning at the intruder. A warning that Atlas was sure it wouldn't have bothered with were it not for the frail, writhing prey it possessively held trapped beneath it.
As though the poor lass might try to escape if it let up. But Atlas could already see she couldn't, even if given the opportunity. The time when she could have escaped on her own two legs was long gone.
The smaller bodied splicer had been torn to shreds long before Atlas arrived and he knew it was only by the merciless grace of ADAM that she continued to make sound and twist about in desperate struggles now.
Far from them all, Atlas could see her arm laying abandoned from the rest of her. A bloody path indicating the distance that the beast had dragged her before it had decided to begin eating. Not even kind enough to off the pitiable splicer before it had dug in for the meal. It hardly needed the feast, it had clearly gorged itself on more than just her and the cats. It seemed that the splicers in the dark had never really been hiding from Atlas in all this time. This was the monster they cuddled up to the shadows for.
This one hadn't hidden well enough.
Now her colony was in ruins, her body little better, and no doubt what was left of her life would be one of instinctual fear and indescribable agony. It was enough to twist Atlas's insides into knots. A baseline empathy stirred in him, a grim sensation that reminded him he must still be human enough to be able to feel it.
Then just as quickly the revulsion of horror turned to anger.
Not even so much at the beast itself as the city that bred it. There might have been a man behind that hanging maw or clawed hands once upon a time. However if there had been, he was long dead. The man must have vanished long before he found himself tearing into some poor woman's skull just to get at her eyes.
Atlas had to believe that if he was to get through the next minute, and then the next, and then the one that would come crawling inevitably after that.
No matter who was to blame, the creature was rabid and Atlas knew the only solution was to put it down.
"Come on then, beasty." Atlas goaded, discarding the rest of Eleanor's gloves in favour of gripping the drill tightly.
He couldn't exactly take aim at the beast with bullet or flame when so much of its massive body was looming over the... the victim.
Atlas didn't question when a splicer became capable of being considered the victim in his mind, but she undoubtedly was and Atlas wasn't going to risk throwing firepower at the beast when he could very well set her alight with it.
Fortunately, the thing was as dumb as it was vicious. Realising the intruder wasn't dissuaded by the warning growls and intended to get between it and the prize, the beast turned onto Atlas in earnest.
Roaring, it tore away from the easy meal and made a direct dash at him.
Despite everything he'd been through in Rapture, Atlas was still terrified as it came barreling towards him not unlike a mad bull. It was big and carried the weight to match.
Atlas had dealt with similar monsters and so he counted on his own mobility to evade it. Leaping aside before it could crush through him and likely also the far wall. Atlas felt the beast rush past him, too close for comfort as all the air seemed to follow after its enormous pull.
Enraged, the beast skidded to a stumbling halt against the cement wall and bellowed again in animal frustration before beginning to redirect itself.
The weight of the drill slowed him, sticking to the ground and spurring Atlas to pivot around it rather than forcing himself to contend with its own bulk. Spinning to face the monster where it struck the far wall in a daze.
It was big but sluggish, unprepared to meet a level-headed resistance as it had taken so many easy, frenzied and terrified prey before this. Atlas was far from its usual hunt and he intended to turn the tables on the thing simply by being more collected than the victims that came before him.
Certainly, he wouldn't mind if it felt a bit of fear itself before the end.
Eleanor was not the only one that had taken inspiration from Delta. And while Atlas couldn't claim to work with plasmids with the same finesse that the father or daughter did, he could quite competently lurch the hefty weight of the drill into the air above him. Only to strike it with a well timed blast of sonic boom.
Repressing ADAM and Fontaine be damned. This thing had to be put in the damned ground.
The sensation of hitting the drill with a sonic boom was not unlike that of a tennis racket connecting with a perfect serve. The bend of both racket strings and rubbery outside of the ball registering before it went rocketing off in the other direction. Satisfying, in a word.
Atlas was pretty damn sure that Fontaine wasn't a tennis guy but the feeling registered so viscerally that he must have played it at least once at some point.
The thought was so bizarre it almost caused Atlas to laugh. Hell, maybe he ought to take up tennis himself.
Then again, perhaps not.
The shot was strong enough to send the drill hurtling through the air at the staggering beast. But the weight of it pulled the drill down lower than expected and rather than finding its target in the monster's neck the drill struck through the flesh of its shoulder.
Atlas refused to think that his aim just wasn't as up to snuff as he'd expected, preferring much more to lay the blame at gravity's feet.
"Oh you have got to be shitting me." Atlas hissed in wild disbelief, but really he should have expected his luck to fail him again.
Furiously Atlas stared at the drill, embedded deeply in the monster's shoulder. To add insult to injury it appeared to be close to where the beast's heart might be but had not gone deep enough to put an end to it. It was so very close to putting a neat bow on the whole affair before things got too sticky for Atlas. But of course not, things never went so smoothly.
Part of him irritably noted that Delta would have probably put the drill right through its thick skull.
Well forgive him for not being a perfect shot with a bleeding sonic boom fired drill! He wasn't exactly working with the intended purpose for either tool here.
Still, there was no doubting that it hurt the monster.
It bellowed and swayed as the arm connected to the impaled shoulder fell limp by its side, rendered completely useless and the wretched thing didn't even seem to consider pulling the drill back out. Far more focused on directing itself back at Atlas who suddenly felt decidedly less confident without the drill in his hands.
This time when Atlas tried to quickly summon up a plasmid, any he could think of in the heat of the moment, he found his veins were beginning to run dangerously dry. Causing a familiar itch to return, sharp and unwelcome in his current predicament.
In a moment of foolish alarm Atlas took his eyes off the beast to look down at his palm seeing the fire he'd attempted to conjure up spitting and choking back out of life, leaving him woefully unprepared for when the beast was bearing down on him.
Managing one last gasped curse of, "Oh christ-!" Atlas was ripped right off his feet.
Clutched tight in the fist of the beast and beginning to feel quite like a porcelain doll about to shatter under the clumsy, abusive grasp of a volatile child.
With its maw still unhinged, the feral splicer began to pull Atlas towards its many rows of grimy, blood coated teeth and he had an all too vivid sight of a future where those jaws closed around his head and smashed it to pieces. His struggling was frantic and no better than the desperate efforts of the little splicer that came before him. Worse still, he knew, infuriatingly so, that it was his own damn fault.
If he'd just topped up his EVE at any point in the journey for Eleanor's suit then he could have burned the beast's insides out with a burst of flames down its throat.
Slimy as the thought was as it slivered disgustingly across his panicked mind - Fontaine was right.
He would die out here without ADAM and EVE.
As it was currently, he couldn't even reach for his pistol. It was trapped somewhere beneath the monster's clawed fingers. All his belongings were caught somewhere between his body and the beast's claws, leaving him with nothing but his own limbs at his disposal. For what little good they would do him. All Atlas could manage was to kick and push, trying to keep himself out of the monster's mouth.
Yet, for as big and frightening as the beast was it remained, at the end of the day, flesh and blood. And just like all living things, there were squishy, weak spots that could be burrowed into with enough determination.
Terrified as he was of the numerous and looming teeth, Atlas did not think of it, but he was hardly the only living thing there that had a desire to see the beast eviscerated.
Atlas didn't see the cat when it reappeared at first.
Only felt the way the beast jerked back, mouth snapping shut mercifully without his head between its teeth, in a fit of shock as the tiny feline clawed its way up onto its head.
Going for the monster's eyes, a fitting place to start as its tiny claws could get inside and tear the weak flesh easily enough. More fitting even still, that the cat went for the same eye on the monster's face as it had taken from the female splicer.
In a beautiful concoction of single minded stupidity and stubbornness, the beast failed to comprehend it could only make use of one of its hands and refused to release the larger prey from that single functional limb. It did little more than stumble about wildly and scream as the cat ripped into its face. Too bullheaded to stop and consider its priorities, if it had the brain to consider anything at all that was.
The momentary distraction gave Atlas the second he dearly needed to think and consider himself. No sooner than he took that stolen second to clear his head did his eyes land on the shiny base of the drill that remained resolutely stuck in the monster's body.
A sight of which sent a thrill of relief, alongside deranged near bloodthirsty excitement, through Atlas.
He might not have any plasmids at his disposal but it took only a moment of effort to jam one boot against the flat underside of the drill and stomp.
The drill went in with an almost frightening amount of ease.
Sinking smoothly into the monster's flesh, easing in like it was making itself at home until the sharp tip struck the things heart and pushed right on through it. Atlas knew the moment it found its mark as the monster went still in an instant. Mouth gaping open, no longer a cavernous abyss of sharp teeth and certain death, but simple, slacked jaw shock.
When it collapsed it almost went slowly but Atlas still hit the ground hard. Its fingers now loose but still curled around him brought Atlas back to the ground on his back with a harsh thud, but truly he'd had worse and nearly experienced having his head bitten clean off not moments ago so he took the fall with a bitter sense of relief all the same.
Letting out a huff of air and going limp against the ground to catch his breath and gather his nerves again.
Rapture was a shit hole before, but surely this was just getting ridiculous.
Atlas might have stayed there for hours given the chance, only it seemed his feline partner in crime had come to see if he was as dead as the monster. Meowing in the most 'cat like' sound Atlas had heard from it, the black cat sat by Atlas's head.
Seemingly expectant as it loomed over him in wait.
Cocking its head to the side, it blinked down at him with its inquisitive, unnatural eyes. They continued to glow faintly with ADAM and Atlas distantly thought his scars looked a bit like that when he really got going. The thought got a dry, pained huff of laughter out of him and drew him back to the present.
Sitting up slowly, the cat gave him plenty of space once he began moving. Atlas groaned as he shoved the dead beast's fingers off from around his waist. Old injuries speaking up again to renew their complaints as a whole new set of bruises came to join them. At least nothing felt broken, just sore.
All in all he had come away without too much to show for it besides some new nightmares. Which, given his impressive backlog of existing night terror fodder, was almost commendable.
"Certified killing machine, and they send me to do the heavy lifting. Don't know what I expected really."
Atlas groused to himself about Eleanor while trying to wipe away the filth and grime from his forehead. Only serving to further smear the blood across his skin as a result. Again wondering to himself what he even expected at this point.
A second quiet meow drew his attention again, but it wasn't directed at him this time.
Looking up Atlas felt his heart sink a little lower. The black cat had joined with a few others that had recovered enough to walk. The small cluster had returned to the female splicer's side.
They produced soft sounds of disquiet and, if Atlas really had to pick a word for it, confusion. He knew that there was no coming back for her, the blood loss would do her in if the simple trauma of it all hadn't already done the job.
The cats were waiting for her to stand as they had but there was no chance of that happening.
For a moment Atlas simply watched from where he sat apart from the colony. Expression tired and resigned as he listened to the beseeching sounds from the lost animals and the faint rattling breaths of the woman.
In the end what had he gained?
Had he ignored this whole fiasco from the start she'd be no better off for it. Bleeding out on the cold hard ground or torn to ribbons, it really didn't matter did it?
Atlas started to look away, trying to find the energy to get up and leave. He didn't have to stay and listen to this. When the same black cat that he'd followed here looked over at him, despite himself Atlas felt almost like an accusation was being made.
Do something. The cat's gaze seemed to say.
As though there was any fucking miracle he could preform to make right what the beast had broken.
But that was not entirely true, now was it?
Atlas knew there was at least one thing he could still do and as much as walking away had its own appeal in cowardice, Atlas was quite done following in Fontaine's footsteps and all that right bastard had ever done was run away. It felt like all he'd ever done was run away too.
There had to be a limit to his running if he didn't want to return to who he'd been.
If Fontaine would run away then Atlas had to move forward and so, he decided not to leave the woman alone to her fate.
With a raggard sigh, Atlas heaved himself back up to his feet. Wobbling as he had to find his balance once again. Once he'd found his footing, he carefully approached the mournful colony. To his surprise they did not greet him like another enemy.
The black cat approached him before he was by the side of the dying woman, weaving between his legs as if to herd him closer. This may have been something of a vote of confidence from it to the others because not one even hissed at him as he took a knee by the woman.
Her gaze was on him immediately. But it was clear by how unfocused her one eyed stare was, that she was barely there.
Atlas smiled for her all the same. Trying to will up the smile Fontaine had performed for citizens while using the Atlas 'brand' in the war. It was a comforting but ultimately shallow gesture and Atlas dropped it for something softer and sadder after a moment.
"Hey love…" he started gently and when she did not wince at the sound of his voice but seemed to relax as much as someone in her condition could, Atlas went on.
"Your little family here really tried its best, yeah? Fought their best for ya. That's special. Bet you tried real hard too. Saved what family you could and you did, didn't ya?"
The black cat that nestled itself between Atlas and the woman nuzzled against her shoulder gently and if that wasn't proof of her efforts then Atlas didn't know what was.
ADAM made or not, Atlas couldn't think of the obvious efforts to protect one another from the colony as anything other than family. Family came first, and he wouldn't treat it as anything less.
"Now I… I'm going to help ya rest, lass." he promised her. "Just...close your eyes if you can. I promise it won't hurt any."
Atlas told her and there was still enough human left in the splicer for her to understand it seemed, as she closed her eye and gave the barest hint of a nod. Atlas was sure even that movement must have hurt her horribly, he sought no other confirmation from her as he withdrew his pistol.
As he placed the mouth of the gun above her head Atlas was careful not to let the cold metal touch her. Better she not feel it, better it happened so suddenly she didn't even know it.
He hesitated on pulling the trigger for just a moment. Using that short second to lay his hand overtop her own. It was the smallest of comforts he could offer but it seemed worthwhile when she gave a soft squeeze back.
When the gun fired Atlas was sure she didn't even have the chance to hear it.
The remaining colony scattered at the sound of the bullet, retreating only a small distance to watch from the corners of the room, no doubt they'd return to her eventually when he was gone.
Only the black cat remained.
The only evidence that it had heard anything at all was the way it flinched and had its fur standing on end. Otherwise it remained resolute by her side and eventually laid down between her neck and shoulder.
Atlas wondered if it ever intended to rise from that place again.
For a short time, he didn't rise either. Sitting there with his hand held limply in the woman's own. Letting the dust settle as he gathered himself yet again. But despite everything, he still felt that he'd made the right decision and felt no new ghosts haunting him.
Ever so quietly, Eleanor returned to him too.
"Voice?" they called upon him gently.
Atlas did not answer, at first he simply didn't have that 'voice' he was so named for to reply to them with.
When Eleanor called again, she did by his name. "Do you want to talk about this, Atlas?"
Eleanor asked in a voice so quiet that he almost believed he had imagined it. All the same Atlas offered back a breathless, humourless chuckle.
"No… no, I really don't..."
And nothing else was said on the matter.