Rapture was a lonely place now.
Perhaps it had always been a lonely place, hard for Delta to say for sure. He didn't remember it in its heyday.
He may not even have been there for that, it seemed Rapture had fallen to decay and destruction with startling speed. Delta didn't know how much of that could be chalked up to ADAM and EVE when the depths were so terribly unforgiving as it was.
His reflection stared back at him when Delta looked out at the ocean beyond Rapture's walls and part of him longed to get lost in the sight of the gargantuas figure wandering through the quiet watery depths. His reflection looked more at place among the deep sea life than he felt walking the leaky halls of Rapture.
Part of him wondered if maybe the sea would still take them if the only way to get to Walter was to take them both out into the still darkness of the black waters.
However, there were those that couldn't follow them out there he wasn't quite willing to leave behind in Rapture.
"Alright son, connection is a bit shoddy around these parts, but don't you be stressing none. We'll keep a close eye on ya while you look for the ol' boy. Just keep that radio rolling for us, yeah?"
Sinclair's familiar voice came buzzing through his headset and Delta smiled faintly, at least Sinclair was keeping to his word of sticking by his side 'in spirit and all that'.
Delta nodded along, knowing Sinclair could see the affirmative movement through the camera and returned his sights to Rapture rather than the sea beyond.
The city remained lonely, dying maybe. He didn't hear much anymore, the few splicers left seemed to be making themselves scarce down here. It suited him just fine but it did leave Delta alone with his own thoughts and they were hardly kind to him currently.
Still, he'd have chosen his own demon's chattering over the droning echo of Lamb's voice as it came across the com system.
"I wonder, Delta, do you know why you are here? Have you any idea what my daughter has given you? As I watch you now - I envy your ignorance. You still believe…"
Delta did not know if her pity came from a place of empathy or condescension, either way he rejected it, continuing to move deeper into Persephone as she spoke on. There was a chance she thought she could talk him into doing what she wanted like so many of her 'Rapture family' before him.
"Delta, the very birthplace of ADAM lies beneath this facility. ADAM may have failed you, dear Delta but exposure to it has made my daughter the ultimate source of change. As soon as you are gone, my daughter will fall into a peaceful coma, spreading ADAM through the ocean, naturally. She isn't just any young woman, Delta. You have no idea what we've both been through to make this possible. Well… no, perhaps you do have an idea. You've been right here suffering with the rest of the city. Worry not, your sacrifices have created something beautiful within Eleanor, now you need only let her go."
Not a chance.
Delta shook his head slightly and ventured deeper into the prison, only offering glances towards the odd remains or corpses he passed. The only thought he could offer them now was that at least their 'suffering for the city' was over now and he hoped they'd found some sort of peace. But he wasn't ready to join them yet, no matter how much Lamb tried to intellectualize the concept of final sacrifice to him.
Frustrated, Lamb tried again to do just that.
"We will abolish suffering, Delta...for all time. Natural Selection failed us, Delta, but Eleanor is already evolving by choice. We must only help her to value society's needs over her own. As the first true Utopian, her identity will be authored by consensus. And when the last of us are gone...Eleanor and her children will know a harmony that you and I can scarcely imagine."
There was a short pause and then Lamb sighed as if giving up on an unruly child that simply refused to see reason.
"And now here you are. You come seeking our brother. To strip him of life for your own. What's one more casual kill, I suppose. All moral reasoning trumped by the survival imperative - even you in all your performance of mercy can't overcome that."
Just like his companions, Lamb too saw his search for Walter as a quest for survival. Even had he the voice to correct her, Delta doubted he'd have tried.
Lamb might call her followers a family and even call his own family by daughter and brother - but she had no idea what it felt like to love a family. Not the way that Delta loved his. He could not express that emotion to her through words and would not waste time attempting to make her comprehend something that could only be selflessly felt.
His silence was not enough to dissuade Lamb who spoke on while Delta paused to collect some more oil for his drill. Knowing that the fight to come would take all he had.
"To steal my daughter you come seeking the death of a man you called your brother. You are a perfect example of Rapture's failures and testament to egocentrism. This city had such potential once, Delta. Ryan's moral impulses were sound enough, he observed the world and asserted, simply; "I can do better." But he failed to understand what Utopia was, it was never to be Rapture. Utopia cannot precede the Utopian. It cannot exist before us. It will exist the moment we are fit to occupy it."
Lamb's speech sounded similar to ones he'd heard play through abandoned audio diaries. So very similar to the speeches Ryan had recorded for them. Delta, very briefly, did pause to listen. Tipping his head up towards the rattle of a rusting speaker. If only because he felt a swell of something like pity for the woman.
"You may not appreciate the blessing she has been gifted, it might look like a curse to you. But her condition as a Little Sister appears to have saved us all. As our new vessel. She will not fall to the same decay as Alexander, this will be no mere personality schism - no. All of Rapture's genius will be held within her DNA, able to shift and take shape at will. A true Utopian cannot be confined to a single throw of the genetic dice. When needed, she is a composer. A dancer. An engineer. A warrior - a daughter. She will truly be the People's Daughter."
If nothing else, it was clear that Sophia Lamb was in too deep now. Who was to say when she'd fallen into the grand delusions she occupied now.
Maybe….just maybe it was when Eleanor was taken from her that she finally fell too far.
Delta wanted to believe there was a time once when Sophia Lamb put her daughter first but...even he was not so great a fool to truly believe that. He could only hope that Eleanor believed it - Delta did not want her to live with the burden of knowing she was always a means to an end.
Lamb's love was less than any child deserved.
Still she prattled on about a Utopia she didn't even set out to create for her own children.
"Utopia is not a place, but a people. And it is my daughter, our daughter, that makes this beauty possible. Thanks to you and all Rapture's children, our girl will be the first daughter of Utopia. A true child of the collective."
Delta could have screamed.
Eleanor was not 'a child of the collective' she was their child. She was too young to even know what half of this truly meant, she hadn't even been given the chance to choose what she wanted to be. Lamb had decided it for her and now Delta had to fight tooth and nail just to rescue her from the cage Lamb had so lovingly chosen for their daughter.
Similarly Lamb had seemingly decided his fate for him too, so used to dictating the lives of those around her.
"No matter if you knew it or not, it is thanks to you that she could ascend to this state. For that, I will show my thanks and have you killed as quickly as possible. As a mercy to my daughter and thanks to you."
A 'merciful' death at the hands of a man he'd had ripped from his grasp and memories - somehow Delta debuted her scinerety.
If nothing else, Delta did not have to suffer Lamb alone as Sinclair's voice scoffed over the radio.
"Christ...just listen to her. All that fancy sermonizing and for what? To turn that sweet little girl into some kinda...what? One-woman collective?"
Sinclair sounded as disgusted as he was purely baffled and Delta wondered too what Lamb's efforts to obtain the first 'utopian' might have done to his daughter.
He was not encouraged when Sinclair pondered aloud, "Like a split personality or something' with hundreds o' different commie geniuses in there? God damn, like the poor girl wasn't crazy enough already…"
Delta made a rather loud, thoroughly displeased sound at that and Sinclair was quick to backtrack.
"Didn't mean no harm by it, chief! Just...ya know...just sayin'."
If they survived this city, Delta resolved to get his hands on some pen and paper so he could write a nice long list for Augustus about all the things he shouldn't 'just be saying'. One for Atlas too while he was at it.
Fortunately when Sinclair spoke up next it was back on topic. He actually sounded rather eager to move along from that last remark.
"Oh...hey, sport, you're almost at the panopticon. Where the warden used to keep an eye on all the boys down here, before Lamb got her hands on it. Almost glad I wasn't trapped down here with the loons after Lamb took over, must have been a madhouse."
Never one to let someone get a word in over her apparently, Lamb took issue with Sinclair's comments and Delta. Rather unwillingly ended up caught in the middle of an argument between two other people over the radio.
Lamb's tone was sharp, short and cold, speaking with the intent to come across as above Sinclair's petty squabbles even as she engaged. "Do you think I instituted the abuse of prisoners here, Delta? Would you truly believe the claims of a confidence man like Augustus Sinclair? Surely not. Surely you don't genuinely believe he plans to share the profits of his grave-robbery with you? He is a man that keeps his soul in his clothes and cigar."
"Hey now, doc! No need for the name calling. We're all mature ladies and gentlemen here out to kill each other, let's do so with some decorum."
Sinclair's snide tone suggested he felt otherwise and Delta sighed as sure enough he went on to add.
"But when I do see ya again, I'm going to give you a short right between the horn rims. After all things weren't so rosy for for your little collective farm down here - look around, sport. This prison didn't get any better since she took over. She kept feedin' Ryan more an' more o' her people into the Big Daddy program to keep the rest alive...and in exchange, she'd get to keep an orphan or two for her own Big Sister project."
Delta dearly hoped the two wouldn't meet in person.
He'd rather they all abandon Rapture without having to come face to face with Lamb. He didn't trust himself to give in to his own hatred for Sophia. There was little to no chance he could look the woman in the face and not think of Walter and Eleanor suffering at her hands.
But Sophia Lamb was not finished. He doubted he could convince her to be silent even if he destroyed every radio within Rapture, she'd find a way to haunt him still.
"Charming as ever, aren't you, Sinclair? But that's all you ever were. Plastic charm and Steinman made smiles." Lamb noted dryly before addressing Delta directly once more.
"Don't be a fool, Delta. Do you think I was the one in charge of your fate here, Delta? That I was the one who rented you out as a laboratory rat?"
Sinclair began to say something but Lamb's voice came stronger over the radio's static, hissing truths to Delta he did not want to hear.
"That policy was the brainchild of your dear companion. You've sold Delta once for your own gain, what's the harm in doing it once more, Isn't that right, Sinclair?"
The silence that followed was ushered in by the sound of Delta's drill striking one of the windows to the sea.
The sharp snap and crack of glass straining under the force ricocheted through the empty halls. Briefly silencing the voices that argued for his attention and judgement.
Delta himself stood still, water trickling in around the cracks in the glass his drill had caused. He needed to take a few deep breaths before jerking the drill free once more, needing to shake his head and ground himself. The thrum of corrupted ADAM still flowed through his veins, calling to him. Asking he let go and give in to the undercurrent of anger and madness that waited beneath.
Lamb was trying to push him over the edge with these revelations, that much was clear.
But he didn't think her a liar either.
Sinclair must have known that too because his voice came urgent and nervous to him once more.
"Wait Johnny- Delta, I-!"
"Whatever is the matter, Sinclair?" Lamb purred through Delta's silence. "Did you think you could hide your dirty hands? After the show you've put on, pretending to act with charity in your heart. You and the voice both - wolves in sheeps skin."
"No!" Sinclair shouted right back, desperation leaking into his voice. As he tried to plead his case the radio crackled and turned to static, breaking words from his defense that Delta was only half listening to anyway. Staring at his watery reflection as Sinclair tried frantically to sway him.
"Chief, it wasn't- I didn't… Look I know ya must be considering' me some kinda heartless monster that never meant to do any good. I...I admit, when I was in charge here you did come into my care and I...I did rent you out to those clinical plasmid trials to Fontaine. But Ryan was going to put you out an airlock an' tell ya to walk home! I know I made you buy each and every breath at a loss but… but at least you still got the wind to curse my name with right? You...you're still alive yeah?"
While Delta stood stationary, both trying not to hear Sinclair's pleading or the call of a prototypes madness, he heard something else entirely. Felt it even. The soft underfoot tremor of something heavy striking the ground in slow, lethargic steps. A big daddy's far off gait - and there was only one big daddy left in Persephone besides himself.
"...kid? Come on, give me something here I-"
Delta couldn't answer Sinclair.
Couldn't think about what Lamb's words meant between the two of them. Instead he took off after the far away echoes of someone just like himself.
He switched off the radio despite Sinclair's final calls for him to stop and think.
Lamb could not be so easily silenced. But a bullet would have to do for now. The closest speaker exploded in a burst of metal chunks and frayed wires. Leaving Lamb's final remarks fading behind Delta. Clinging to his thoughts like a sticky poison all the same.
"I'm afraid, Subject Delta, that you are a man out of time. You know perfectly well what ADAM does to the mind….it is over."
Despite it all, Lamb's fading voice did sound sad and Delta couldn't spare the time to wonder if that was genuine empathy for him or just Lamb looking over the tragedy of Rapture with self indulgent pity.
"All laboratory animals expire, Delta. Their lot is brief and cruel. But you...are different. There are those that have taken great pains to preserve you against my wishes. Our daughter, of course, played her hand in it well and you will always be 'Father' to her. I believe they only achieved this through Alexander's studies, mad as he was, perhaps he felt guilt before hsi corruption and a desire to reunite you with the man he took from you."
"You were a corpse, Subject Delta — a fallen knight in my rivalry with Ryan. Through her little sisters and miss White, Eleanor found the means to restore you, for a time. With the ADAM reserves I believe Eleanor had hoped to sustain you forever, but of course that could never be. Only through stealing life from others can you continue to live. I cannot allow you to continue on in this way. Consider it my final thanks for your hand in creating Eleanor and...my apology for what became of you and Mister Walter."
Still Delta heard her voice grow loud and soft as he passed each speaker in his haste and if paused to truly listen to her words, he'd have recognised them as a eulogy of sorts.
For all her claims of apology and compassion for him, Lamb did not hesitate to close the doors behind Delta when he finally entered the panopticon of Personphone. Knowing that within the prison walls he'd likely be meeting his end and if not his then that of his friend.
"Make your peace with the world, Delta. I believe it may miss you. Say goodbye to Eleanor too. For as long as she is only Eleanor she will mourn you. Then she will know peace from sorrow...but no doubt there will always be a part of the Utopian that knows to miss you."
Delta distantly wondered if one day the 'Utopian' might miss Lamb too and if that thought kept her awake at night.
…
…
Rapture was now a quiet place.
In its heyday, among the aristocracy, there was always the lure of music. A sort of omnipresent lyrical tinge to the air. That was at times punctuated with the sing of an advert's cheery sales pitch or a ring of delighted laughter as crystal glasses chimed together.
Below there was the clang of metal upon metal and seat covered brows that went unrewarded even within the promised land. There were gruff voices and shouted orders that more often than not became arguments. It was noisy below as so it was above, even if the raket took on a different pitch.
And then, at the end, there was chaos in the sound.
From both the socialites above and those that had been left to toil beneath, there was an uproar of panic. It had grown day by day, swelling and soaring higher until there was no way to keep it from their ears. Still, if one was to listen real close, there was a chance that under all the sound they could hear the whisper of soon to be ghosts calling for ceasefire, gone unheard.
Then, once the raucous noise distended too widely and became too bloated to bear - it burst. Scattering the pandemonium to all corners of the dying city that continued to chitter with madmen and the few still clinging to some misguided hope things could be resurrected.
For a great many years that was how Rapture remained.
A constant, ear grating clamour of the dead and dying. Neither quite able to keep their peace as the the sunken city inched them deeper and deeper into the cold awaiting abyss of the sea.
Thus, when it became well and truly silent, it was impossible not to take notice.
Even for the beast that saw the world through only haze and instinct as the last prototype big daddy was able to notice the shift.
Perhaps Demo did not care about this sudden lull in the noise, no longer capable of such a nuanced thing as caring, but he did feel the change.
It carried on the air, that heavy quiet that was broken only by short, bloody scuffles between the few remaining splicers. Ones made shorter still should Demo be dragged into them.
The family had once been vast and ever expanding with the lost souls of Rapture, but even they had thinned and become scarce now. More so in Persephone's depths than elsewhere in the city, this was where the beasts lurked still. Scaring off the smaller and perhaps marginally more human of the family. So even they were not here to ease the crushing silence.
Demo stopped now, pausing ever so briefly in whatever new task had been assigned to him, and listened. Trying to catch a scrap of noise to urge him forward.
There was no call of a little one to guide him, nor bloodshed to pull him in a new direction. The only thing to direct him now was the voice of the woman above instructing him to find the daughter.
Demo was long past the ability to comprehend why he was given some orders or why things played out in the way they did. The world was a black and white balance of combat, wholly dependent on if someone was attacking him or not and if he was told to respond in kind.
The simplicity of it all was numbing and might have been named unendurable had Demo known the words to think as much.
When was the last time he'd had a full thought?
Demo didn't rightly know, nor the care to wonder. Had he been so inclined or indeed able to try thinking back to his last coherent moment, it would have come to him easily. It'd have come in a bloody affair of shrieks caught inside the metal cage wrapped around his body, bouncing and amplifying but going lost on deaf ears beyond his iron shell.
But that was then, 'then' being too many lifetimes ago to even try digging back up. No thought only returned to him in fleeting moments of great suffering. As if his body were punishing him for trying to think in the first place.
Was it truly worth the agony just to know the horror of his condition? To be made, albeit briefly, aware of what the world around him was and his place in it now?
Likely not.
How much kinder it was to float through the world thoughtless, with only the vaguest memory of the sounds of Rapture to keep him company. In the whitenoise and tingling numbness at the edges of his mind there was safety.
Dealing out pain to things that would threaten his reprieve came naturally, it was as much of a necessity as breathing was. Demo would not be in pain again - he would not feel if feeling meant more of that infernal wailing from within his own suit.
Perhaps that was why the sight of the other prototype that stepped before him caused Demo to feel rage in earnest.
Maybe that was why it urged him into motion immediately and caused Demo to momentarily discard the assigned objective of reaching the daughter in favour of lunging at the unwelcome prototype.
The act of which only seemed to cause the clawing, aching pain in the back of his skull to grow worse still.
Demo had not the faculties to analyse why that was or consider that it may have been attacking the older big daddy that caused his suffering to be exacerbated.
Had he just a thread of memory or sense left, no doubt he'd have known better. No doubt he'd have recognised something in his enemy that caused him a melancholy pain that was drowned out by the other pains he could not process.
Of course he could not know these things as he was now.
So when he crashed into the other that had left his suit damaged and scarred with reminders of previous clashes, Demo aimed to cut the irritant from the world. It was the only way he could see to get the agony to ease, if only for a time.
The Alpha Series was stronger and more resourceful than Demo had initially been prepared for.
That much had been proven well enough in their prior encounters and now Demo remained cautious of its plasmids. When he saw a spear lift from the enemy's hand, propelled by ADAM, Demo retreated a few paces. Lifting his shield hastily to stop the spear in its tracks. He needn't have bothered as the spear missed by a wide margin. Confusing given the limited space between himself and the enemy.
He was a creature of instinct, not recklessness. Demo did not stop to attempt to wonder how he recognised this enemy when all the others before it blurred into a singular sense of 'danger'. This one stood out, this one became the enemy rather than just one of an amalgamation of many fights won. He knew to be cautious of the one.
However this caution turned out to be ill placed, the Alpha Series appeared to hesitate and Demo couldn't even wonder why that might be in the midst of the skirmish. The enemy's hesitation allowed an opening and Demo did not share in Delta's uncertainties.
Striking the other beneath the ribs and sending him stumbling back a few paces, nearly onto his back. The next blow came just as quickly as Demo rushed forward to strike the enemy again. Slamming the shield lashed to his arm into Delta's helmet - this time he did go down.
Hitting the ground hard, Delta struggled to try and sit upright again but his efforts were slowed too heavily by the daze the impact to his head left Delta with. Within moments Demo was atop the prone alpha series prototype.
Bringing the shield down upon his helmet a second time.
A third time.
A fourth.
The thunderous clash of every collision echoed around the prison walls. Erasing the quiet that had begun to concern Demo before the encounter with the enemy took up all of his attention.
His enemy was too weak to stop the blows, making some feeble attempts to grip at Demo's arm and stop the next impact. That grip became weaker still after the fifth strike and remained there as though the enemy simply didn't know what else to do with his hands.
Something had to give eventually and with a deafening crack that ripped straight through the dull reverberations of the impacts, it was the enemy's helmet that went.
Demo paused, a sensation that was as close to victory as he could feel washing over him.
The enemy could likely not survive without it's shell. So many others before this were fused in with the metal and tearing it from them was akin to ripping flesh from bone. Demo had torn enough of them apart to expect the shattering metal to come away red tinted with a spray of gore.
But the glass shattered cleanly, breaking apart in large chunks, free of flesh and blood, leaving only a hole into the enemy's face and Demo saw-
Autumn.
The beast paused and for the first time in what must have been years had a simple, ponderous thought. Autumn, it wondered, what is that?
Demo thought he could see it. Thought he could gleam something familiar in the tired, warm gaze staring back at him through broken glass and flecks of debris. Something far away, well above the city and the family that now guided him by an invisible chain. Something warm and fragile. Something he had long lost.
A vast bleeding sky overhead. Falling and fallen leaves of orange, yellow and red, scattering the pavement with little specks of a fading Summer. Air not made stagnant by a drowned city's manufactured life, still crisp and clear, cooling in the time of change.
It was the image he'd tried to capture with ink and paint countless times but always fell short, unable to successfully bottle what it was he loved about the colours of the world above. Colours he only ever found in one other place.
That's what he saw. It was Autumn,and he'd found it in those eyes many years ago. Now again, looking on the colours of autumn captured in those eyes, Demo remembered he was once a man.
And it unmade him.
It only took seconds for Demo to stumble back from the prone enemy. Backing up until his legs were too weak to carry his reated and the Demo Daddy came to his knees only a few paces away from Delta. As he collapsed he clung feebly to his dented shield, trying to support himself still as the splitting pain of memory bombarded him once more.
Try as he might, he could not push the memories down quickly enough to save himself the agony of knowing. For all his conditioning and suffering, eventually a name came surging to the forefront of his mind. Unrelenting in its demands to be known and damn Demo's own suffering, he remembered.
Johnny.
Forcing his head upright Demo saw the enemy, Delta...Johnny, beginning to try and right himself. The other prototype was sloppy in his hasty efforts to get back up and...no doubt check on Demo. An idiot to the end.
But Johnny's injuries were nothing to scoff at and the man could do little more than sit upright, watching him through that fragmented helmet with those painfully gentle Autumn eyes. The sight of them was all the cracked dam needed to crumble and pour free further memories. In the surge of disjointed thoughts and feelings, Demo had a second name forced into his thoughts.
His name. Walter.
He was once a man and that man had once been Walter.
Oh god...what had been done to them? Worse still, what was still being done to them?
Walter recalled their names and felt the weight of the pain the came with awareness, but he was not in control. The first time he'd encountered Johnny like this the pain of almost remembering had pulled him away from the conflict. But the beast he was had become desperate and eager to tear the source of that awareness out of the world. To go back to the closest thing they had to peace. Demo's body eventually stilled, gathering itself as whatever was left of Walter lingered uselessly at the fringes of their consciousness.
As Demo straightened up it was still with the intent to carry out the mother's demands and erase Delta from the world.
And when Delta approached him, still so bloody hopeful as was his way, Walter only slipped further out of focus.
Johnny, he wanted to beg of the other. It's not me.
But there wasn't enough left of him to say it, only feel the words as he slowly faded away. Hoping with those final lucid thoughts that Johnny would not resent him for making him be the one to the deed.
…
…
The world looked different without the shield of his helmet between he and it.
Delta reflected distantly that it seemed so much sharper now. Unforgiving now he was left exposed, with part of his armour cracked. As though the city were just biding its time, awaiting a chance to seep into his suit and eat him from within.
Rapture was relentless, true enough, but Delta knew it better than whatever home he'd had known above. Back before the memories turned hazy and incongruous to him now. So when Demo surged forward towards his outheld hand, he knew better than to hope it was Walter coming to meet him once again.
Delta squeezed his eyes shut as Demo lunged for him, feeling the prickle of ADAM beneath his fingertips only seconds before the other prototype was on him. The whirl of the harpoon came swift and true, striking Demo by the shoulder and flinging the beast that held what was left of his Walter inside of it back away from Delta's lingering, outstretched hand.
As the monster struggled with its own clumsy weight, reaching to pull the harpoon free of where it had wedged itself between the joints of its protective armour, Delta stood with his eyes still shut tight.
Hand dropping down to form fists at his sides as he struggled with an onslaught of emotion he wished he were not the owner of. To feel hatred so potently felt unlike him. But really what would he know? He barely knew who he was.
Perhaps the person that had been Johnny Topside was hotheaded and hateful. How was he to know?
Well...no. That wasn't fair, now was it?
Slowly, begrudgingly he opened his eyes again and saw through the broken glass Walter across from him tossing the harpoon aside, gathering himself once more for a fight that had precious few outcomes for them.
He couldn't have been all that bad could he? Because against all rationality and reason - hadn't Walter still chosen him?
When they'd all known that Johnny Topside would inevitably spell ruin for anyone close to him with Ryan's own paranoia driving him to greater and greater depths, Walter had made that decision. Over all of Rapture, over all his claims of great wit and common sense - Walter had still made the decision to stay by his side.
He'd chosen Johnny over it all. To the very end.
And so, with a deep, shuddering breath, Johnny righted himself as well. Curling his fingers and summoning up more EVE to feed his telekinesis, he took up arms against Walter. If only because he had to choose Walter over himself this time too.
Hurt as it might to be the one that had to do it, Delta, Johnny, whoever he was now, loved Walter still and knew he couldn't leave his friend in this place to sink.
So he steeled himself and when Demo lunged for him again, Delta didn't hesitate to meet him.