21. Tempest
When I came too wheat and machinery was strewn about the laboratory floor, the panes of the Siphon enclosure broken and blown out and glinting all about. Save for the dim light of blasted control panels and sparks that issued from fallen electrical equipment, it was again dark. Of Edmonton and his men, I saw nothing, only smears of blood upon the tile and the faux Brit's orphaned Steyr. Nearby a plank of siding hung, driven straight into a concrete pillar.
Shoving the debris upon me aside I staggered to my feet, metal clanking upon the floor as I craned my head toward the distant gunfire resonating down the hallways. Whether it was Engels, Comstock's loyalists or the Vox I couldn't tell. Negotiating the debris strewn tile I came to the apex of the low, circular stair Edmonton had ascended to enter the containment. Atop it there remained only half a doorframe...and Powell's headshot corpse, bloody and gaunt upon the floor. The one who'd called himself Pettifog lay there too...impaled manifold by razor sharp blades of glass. I hadn't recalled him being shot, and by the lack of glass shards anywhere else, his evisceration did not look accidental.
Warily I turned to Elizabeth whose eyes were clenched, forehead damp with perspiration. Upon the bench hands that had been bound were now free, though still at her side in claw-like rigor. She was sobbing softly. The thing in her back I now saw to be some form of syringe...one the size of my fist. I dropped the weapon and gently took her hand, lifted her with a slip of my own beneath palm her right shoulder blade. It was my freshly wounded wing, and though it pained me to do so I reminded myself it was nothing compared to the agony she was in. As I took her, she moaned, pain coursing her face. Beneath the blue of her single sheet, she was quite naked. My effort exposed the syringe...the drain...had been inserted directly into her spine. Her wet eyes cracked open to mine.
"I got you. It's okay." I said, barely able to think for fear of what might transpire next. By the way she gaped at my touch I could tell this wasn't good...what the hell had they done to her? Some form of powering cable sprouted from the drain's cap. "Okay, I'm...I'm gonna fix this." Was all I could say, having no earthly idea of how to do so. If I pulled it, it might kill her.
"Just...just do it." I heard her whisper. Against my better judgment, I prayed, and I drew the steel from her back.
"AHHHHHHNG!" She bellowed and arched, a spurt of bloody fluid issuing in its awful wake. Again, she cried out...convulsed. I caught her in my arms as she slumped forward, gasping for breath. I tried to pull her toward me, yet she pushed me away, hand quaking in the air as she attempted close eyed to breathe against the shock and pain. Amid her back now lingered the impression of a circle larger than a silver dollar, divided into three sections with a slowly closing hole.
As she sat there holding herself the sheet began to fall away. Recovering her with the linen, I took her in my arms and hefted her upward to my chest. "I've got you. This is going to be all right."
"You came for me." She whispered, eyes finding mine.
"Of course, I did." I groaned. Her head and hands found my shoulder, feet dangling bare as I made my way out from the ruined center. I felt her exhale. "How couldn't…" I staunched the shudder in my bones. 'We're going to find an airship and leave."
"Booker..." She rasped, eyes now open blearily. "We can't."
"Paris, Elizabeth. Remember, you wanted to go to Paris?!"
"Booker..." She rasped, shaking, voice a tremble. "You don't understand. Your dream of New York...it...it happens."
"What?"
"I saw it...while they were trying to bend me." She said with tear-stained eyes. "Columbia lays waste to your city...then others. Only it...wasn't Comstock doing it. It was…it was me!" She was crying again now. "And it was far worse than you can imagine...a sea of fire."
"You?" I asked incredulously, stopped dead in my tracks with what I was certain a dumb expression upon my face. Finally, I realized what those words on Monument Island had meant. And the Seed of the Prophet shall drown in fire the mountains of man.
"Yes." She whispered, holding herself. "It was me."
#
Fearful to handle her further I set Elizabeth in a chair, searching for her clothes amongst the wreckage. The room was cold. Clad only in the sheet, she was shivering, feet bare upon the floor with toes inward. Near the dressing room alongside the bay I discovered a door placarded "Oracular Array" along with a red lettered sign stating "Authorized Personnel Only." Seeing as the door had been destroyed, I nominated myself so authorized and ventured inward.
The chamber was long, paneled with wood and hanging curtains but no windows. At the center, twin rows of what looked like mirror frames on either side dotted a long table. About that central work other tables and ledgers festooned the walls, filled with files and notes. Several large cameras lay beside them along with stacks of photographs. As I perused the stands, I realized the chamber smelled of fried air, and with a half turn discovered that the mirrors were nothing of the sort. Twin posts with a bar across the top of each held a singular Lutece Cell, poised above an oblate sphere while two poles with balls protruded below. Between the two lay an undulating eye of fire. Within its perimeter was not the back of the room.
Through each I saw vivid scenes in varying shades of sepia, including one of myself looking at myself in the chamber. I jerked backward, checking it in increasing detail both front and behind. Back in the Siphon Chamber I heard noise and quickly returned to find Elizabeth risen but prostrate against a pillar. I took her in my arms set out to find somewhere warmer.
Beyond the doors I found a marble corridor, wider and more ornate than any I'd yet come across. Carpeted in red and bedecked with pillars and paneling, through its high glass windows I could see an airship lifting away. It wasn't Engels. Upon its outer walk gesturing into the distance, I made out Comstock. Though my gaze followed, he wasn't even aware I still lived. Instead with his hand he pointed deckhands toward the Liftworks.
Searching the next few doors I stumbled upon a grand foyer, decorated with sculptures of angels and heavenly apparitions. Following the carpet at its center I came to what could only have been Comstock's bedchambers. Parting twin doors with a kick of my boot revealed an expansive bed, canopied in burgundy and red upon a darker carpet with gold filigree. Gently I lay Elizabeth upon its covers, realizing that not only was it freshly made but unslept in. Off to the side I found a pitcher of water, cubes of ice still solid within its glass round. Outside the midday was dark with clouds, split by the sound of gunfire and explosion. Fearful to move her yet again, I decided to wait. Hours passed, and I wondered after Edmonton's demise what had happened to his warship.
Eventually I hazarded another search, prowling through the adjacent chambers as Elizabeth rested. Where Comstock's staff had gotten off to, I didn't know, for this wing of the House seemed entirely abandoned. In his chamber four wardrobes adorned the walls, along with two large walk-in closets. Within one hung rows of immaculately tailored shirts and coats, clothing that I found fit my frame oddly well. Filling the basin in Comstock's lavatory, I washed the blood and grime from my face. Attended my newly shot arm...looked in the mirror.
I had deduced from still being alive that my new arm wound and scrapes were undaunting. Discovering a pair of tongs and a bottle of grain alcohol, I set the razor down and took a hearty swig. One by one I then extracted the more painful splinters...but could not reach the bullet. I bled a little more before wrapping my wounds with linen strips. I felt weak and spent and wondered just how the hell I could go on. With a hand towel I cleaned the mess from my face, washed the grit and grime from my arms and chest. Now both my arms hurt.
After dousing my head in the tub scrubbed it clean with a bit of Comstock's soap. I had days of stubble, and finding the moment borrowed the man's abandoned razor to shave. Leaving the bath behind, I shoved a wardrobe in front of the inward opening door and took to the bed beside the girl...closed my eyes. Amid the chaos outside and intermittent echoes of fighting, it was all too easy to again see New York in flames.
It couldn't be her.
But then I remembered my dream. Had one of those mirrors shown that?
#
When next I opened my eyes, it was to Elizabeth shaking my shoulders, the room about us dimly lit by electric lamps. The sun, if there was one, was blocked by gaudy tasseled shades. "Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead!" She exclaimed with furrowed brow, nearly beside herself.
"I will be if you keep shaking me like that!" I exclaimed, sitting upright upon my bad arm...a mistake I immediately regretted.
Her fingertips flew to her mouth. "You've been shot there too?!"
"Does it show?" I groused, cradling its bandaged girth. Wrapped in the sheet to her chest, she took my forearm in her hands, petrified. "Bullet's still in, but...I'll live." A determined look came upon her face. There was a shimmer over my arm and I felt a crackling sensation. The bullet fell out upon the bed. "My God, how'd you do that!?" I exclaimed. Though my arm hardly felt any better, psychologically it was a shocking relief.
"We're farther from the Siphon here." She answered, pulling the sheet tighter around her bosom. "Now that the house machine is destroyed..."
"You have free reign."
"No." She replied, handing my forearm back to me. "I don't, but..."
"Well..." I said, remembering the destruction she'd summoned. "After what you did back there, it sure looks to me that you have free reign."
She looked at me with forlorn eyes. "You've…no…no idea what…what…they were doing to me."
"I have every idea of what they were doing to you." I said without looking. "And I don't blame you one damned bit. Edmonton and those bastards had it coming and if it hadn't been you it was damned well gonna be me."
"Edmonton?" She said, and I suddenly wondered if she'd even known the Bavarians had even been in the chamber. It didn't matter.
"You…all right?" I took her by the elbow.
She lowered her eyes. "As 'all right' as perhaps I'll ever be." She glanced toward her bare back.
I looked away now, realizing that she had become conscious of her undress. "You need to find something to wear."
She glanced to me, obviously still in pain but studying my own new apparel. "Where…did you find those?"
"In there." I said, turning to the closet. This is Comstock's bed chamber. His and his wife's." Through her figure the thought sent a chill. "I didn't find any women's things."
Tentatively Elizabeth placed her foot upon the carpet, standing with her hand upon the bed for balance. Though it was obvious she wasn't entirely well, she managed to rise, glancing out the window toward the racked cloudscape beyond. Hand holding her sheet in place she hobbled across the floor to peer into the closet, the scabbed mark upon her back bared to see. "These fit you?"
"Close enough." I answered, turning up the sleeves of my fresh shirt. After a moment I joined at her side.
Together we looked through the dressers, discovering little of value for a lady. She ventured toward a side door I'd thought another bathroom and opened it to reveal an adjacent passage. Walking together its length, we passed a closed chamber on the left and arrived at an attached nursery.
As I pondered the empty cradle, she attempted the side door. "Locked." Producing a needle from thin air, she knelt and picked it. The door opened to a large space adorned by dresses and boxes of women's clothing.
"Bingo." I muttered.
Together we entered and Elizabeth began to sift through the hangers, looking at dress after dress. "These were my mother's." She seemed to freeze, turning slowly back toward me with a tormented expression. "Do you hear that?"
I heard nothing. "Elizabeth...are you all right?"
She pushed me aside and entered the adjoining nursery. "There...there's a tear." Seeming to look about the place, she suddenly turned and looked back down the corridor.
"Elizabeth..." She walked past me, picking up her pace until she entered the bedchamber then out into the passageway. "Please, you're not in any condition..."
"I told you, there's a tear!" As if possessed she continued back from whence we'd come the day before, drawn like a moth to the flame of the Oracular Array. As she entered, I followed, seeing the girl's eyes upon the myriad burning windows. She seemed drawn to one...the scene a small, black haired baby girl in the cradle within the nursery we'd only just left...and two women arguing over her crying form. One of them was unmistakably Lady Comstock.
Dead Lady Comstock.
"You whore!" I saw her shout, fists clenched over the crib.
"I assure you, Madame, my sexual interest in our dear Prophet is non-existent. Furthermore, the man is quite sterile." The other woman I didn't recognize, though she had auburn hair and was rather attractive save for her taciturn demeanor.
"That is a lie!" Comstock shrieked, nearly knocking the cradle over in her wrath. "Take your little bastard! I want her out of my house!" The scene collapsed, leaving Elizabeth silent. Shortly afterward the next array began to show it, differences slight but noticeable.
"Sterile..." I whispered, approaching her side as her eyes fixated upon the next one. "Who was that woman?"
"They weren't my parents." Elizabeth said after a moment's pause.
"Unless the other woman was..." I looked upon the next array. "Is lying. Who is she?"
"Was she..." Elizabeth answered, eyes hanging upon her visage. "Rosalind Lutece."
"That's Rosalind Lutece? Tears and lift cells Lutece?!"
Elizabeth nodded. "The same. I thought she'd just...gone. But...but what Daisy said...Fink had her killed."
"And why would Fink have done that?" I looked into her eyes...felt the paper in my pocket. "Unless it was to steal her technology...her secrets."
Eyes turned downward, she'd stopped listening to me. "I'm not even his daughter...I'm just some child they decided to imprison. Some...specimen...to be poked...prodded!"
"No, you are not." I took her shoulders in my hands, drawing her eyes to mine. "Elizabeth, listen to me...what you've been through, ain't nobody in the world deserves that."
"Booker..."
"We are getting' out of here, you got that? And we ain't never gonna have to look back."
"I told you we cannot leave! We must find Comstock and..."
"Why!"
"To stop ME!" She wailed, hand shooting to her face. "I will not, cannot, allow that to happen!"
"And what if by chasing his sorry ass down that is exactly what happens? What if I'm killed and you're left to him? Dammit, Elizabeth, that's why we're leaving!"
"NO!" She shouted, not out of anger but sheer panic. Whatever she'd seen had frightened her beyond all reason.
"So, what? You're going to kill him?"
She huffed, shaking her lowered head. "Is this where you start...moralizing...Booker? You forget..." She turned to look at me with a burning glare. "I know you."
It had been a mistake to tell her…a mistake to tell anyone. I took the Russian repeater and checked its load. "I'm not gonna let you kill him."
"Really, Booker?" She said, in a flash of power impossibly peeling back the chamber to the maelstrom, a horizon of wheat and corn above which spun that hellish storm. Machines sparked, Lutece cells fell from their mountings and viewing apparatus tumbled to the floor. "What are you going to do to stop me?!"
The blast tore machines apart, and as they sputtered and lamps and papers and tables crashed to the floor, I realized she was right. Elizabeth was no mere girl...she was a weapon and death danced at her heels.
I'd faced death before.
I took a step toward her, gazing sternly down into her eyes. "Not a damned thing..." Amid the gale I let the repeater fall to my side and took her in my arms. Our lips met, and with my fingers at the back of her neck I felt her bend, tresses whipping across my arms. The tempest broke. After what seemed an eternity we parted, hovering silently before her closed eyes. Sparks flew about us from the wrecked viewing equipment, only a handful of the dozens still intact. She was a mess. With my bloodied arm I brushed her hair back. Her shocked eyes opened and looked to mine, uncertain, transfixed.
"I'm gonna do it for you."