"Jack?"
No answer.
She tries again. "Jack."
Again, silence.
She's starting to panic again. "Jack!"
"Damnit Atlas, I'm getting them. Just hang on-"
Elizabeth jumps when she hears a loud BANG! coming from the other side of the radio. It's quickly followed by another BANG! and then a scream.
"Take THAT, you ugly-"
"Jack!"
"Atlas, I-"
"I'm not Atlas."
BANG! "Oh."
Elizabeth sighs. "Um, do you-do you remember me?"
"Uh. Yeah, I-oh, no you don't!-I think so. You're the girl, right? Elizabeth?"
"Yeah."
"So, you're still alive?-Hey, buddy! Want a light?"
Another scream, following by laughter.
Elizabeth shakes her head. "I don't suppose you set him on fire?"
"Uh-yeah. How'd you know?"
She resisted the urge to smile. "Listen, I need some help."
"You don't say," Jack teases.
"Shut up."
"Fair enough. What do you need?"
"Uh...advice?"
Advice is a good place to start, she thinks. She waits for his response.
There's a loud thunk on the other side, and Elizabeth wonders if he maybe hit his head on something. Then she hears a scream, and figures that maybe Jack a lead pipe or something he was using as a weapon. She makes a mental note to take a leaf out of his book. "Advice on what?"
"Erm...well, I figured out where I am."
Another loud thunk. "That's good."
"But I don't have a way out."
"That's bad."
"Yeah."
"Have you-agh! You little-oh, oh crap. Not good. Not good."
"What's wrong?"
"Uh, Big Daddy. Be right back."
"Wait, what?! Jack? Jack!"
Silence. She waits for a few moments, but the line remains silent.
"That bastard," she grumbles to herself.
She waits about ten minutes for him to come back before giving up.
"Guess I'm on my own, then," she says, to no one in particular. "Hooray."
She's been scrounging for something, anything, to help her out, but so far, she's empty.
She sighs, getting up from her crouching position on the ground and beginning to head back towards the bathyspheres when something catches her eye.
She turns, and, is that a-
It is.
Elizabeth hurries over to the corpse lying in the far corner of the tiny room. Trying her best to ignore the smell, she picks up the item that had caught her eye and inspects it closely.
Well, she was right about eventually finding some weapons down here.
She checks the crossbow's ammunition.
It also appears she was right about the ammo.
Elizabeth groans. "I can't catch a break, can I?"
Twenty minutes later, and she still hasn't found any ammo for the crossbow. Really, it's starting to get pathetic. Elizabeth has just about given up when she hears the familiar crackle of the radio from her hip.
She grabs it, pressing the button almost at once.
"Jack?"
"Uh-yeah. H-hi."
He's out of breath, Elizabeth can tell; he's taking such big breaths she thinks he's almost hyperventilating. She waits for him to continue.
"S-sorry. For-for leaving you-like that. My bad."
"Yeah, you're damn right. You're so lucky you didn't die, jackass."
"Don't be-so sure-about that," he chuckles. He freaking chuckles, godammnit. He continues after a moment, "So, ah-what did you need me for?"
"I need-"
"Right, right. A way out. Did you check to see if the bathysphere was still there? Or are you trapped in a room?"
"I'm in Fontaine's Department Store, and yes, I checked for the bathysphere. It's not there."
"Ah. Did you try calling it?"
"Did I try-what?"
"Did you try calling it?"
"You can do that?"
"Uh-yeah. There should be a lever somewhere around the bathysphere dock that you can pull. Should call up another one."
"Uh-okay."
A pause. "You don't believe me."
She scoffs. "I'm never too inclined to believe anyone. No matter who they are."
"Well, it's good to know that it's not a personal thing."
She doesn't have a good response to that, so she doesn't answer.
"Alright, I found it. Now what?"
"Uh, pull it, obviously."
"...Right."
She re-attaches the radio to her hip before she puts both hands on the lever and pushes down with every ounce of strength she possesses.
It won't budge.
She tries again.
Nothing.
"Jack, I think it's stuck."
"Wow, something not working in an old, abandoned building that hasn't been used in years? What a surprise!"
"Quit being a smartass and help me figure this out."
"Alright, alright. Um...okay, let's see...wait, hang on."
She hears the snap of a camera going off, then he's back. "Alright, I'm here. Uh, maybe you could find some oil or something for it. Oil tends to get things unstuck, right? At least, it did where I grew up. Go find some oil."
"Where the hell am I supposed to get oil?"
"It's a department store. There's all kinds of stuff just lying around. I'm sure you'll find some somewhere."
Elizabeth nods before she remembers that her companion can't see her, so she says, "If you say so."
"Glad to hear it. So, uh, listen, I'm kind of in the middle of something here-get back here, you bastard!-so, ah, maybe-"
"...Right. Talk to you later, I guess."
No response. Elizabeth rolls her eyes, shaking her head.
She turns and looks around the bathysphere area for anything that could be of use. She doesn't find anything, of course, but when she catches sight of her own hand resting on the lever, she gets an idea.
She pulls back, charges up her plasmid, and fires.
Nothing.
"Damnit," she grumbles. "Out of EVE."
Jack's voice comes through the radio. "Oh, by the way, Electro Bolt won't work."
She has no idea what he's talking about until she remembers that Electro Bolt is the injectable equivalent of Shock Jockey. Blushing, she replies, "I wasn't trying to use Electro Bolt."
"Mhm. Listen, if you wanna get out of here, you're going to have to find something to get that lever unstuck. And your best bet right now isn't a plasmid, it's something that's known to get things unstuck."
"Yeah, yeah. Got it. I'll go find some, while you do...whatever it is you're doing."
"Taking pictures for a crazy old fisherman."
"Er-what?"
"Forget it, Liz. Good luck!"
"It's Elizabeth."
Again, no response, and Elizabeth gives her best bitchface to the silent radio before leaving the bathysphere dock to go find something that will get her the hell out of here.
"Tasty ADAM, yum…"
"Get out of there, sugar! We want your ADAM!"
Ah, great. Splicers.
Just what she needs right now.
They're huddled around a Little Sister vent, banging on it with their various weapons. Elizabeth knows that won't end well for them; it never does. They don't seem to have noticed her yet. She'd like to keep it that way, so she elects to ignore them, and continues on her way.
Unfortunately, her life sucks.
"Hey! Who's the pretty lady?" one of them yells, pointing his wrench at Elizabeth.
Oh, shit, she thinks.
"Dunno, but it looks like she's got ADAM! Get her!"
Elizabeth wonders whether she should run or if she should fight. Two seconds later, however, she doesn't have a choice.
One of the Splicers knocks her upside the head with the side of his gun, and Elizabeth falls to the ground.
Scrambling to get up, she flips around onto her back and reaches behind her for a weapon. Her hand falls on a lead pipe, and, using all of her strength, she grabs it and smashes it into the first Splicer's face.
Using his pain as a distraction, Elizabeth gets up from the floor and swings the pipe into the second Splicer's stomach, and then turns around to deliver a killing blow to the first one.
He dodges it.
Guess he's learned his lesson, then, she thinks to herself. She readjusts her grip and swings again, this time aiming for his legs. She gets one solid hit in before the second Splicer tackles her from behind, causing her to drop her weapon in surprise.
The Splicer claws at her back, trying to get as much skin off of her body as possible. Elizabeth tries to shake her off, but to no avail. She briefly wonders if she could make a reach for one of her weapons, but soon decides that's impossible. Even if she could, there's no way she could kill the Splicer on her back without injuring herself, and the first Splicer seems to be down for the moment, so for a few seconds, he's not a threat.
She finally manages to elbow the Splicer on her back right in the stomach, which takes enough wind out of her to make her grip weak. Elizabeth uses this golden opportunity to finally shake her off. Once she's free, she grabs her shotgun and shoots the first Splicer, who had just started lunging at her, and then she turns around and blows the second one's head off.
Oops.
She's suddenly reminded of all of the times her father had done the same thing, and she wonders if those had been accidents too.
She shrugs. "All's well that ends well, I suppose," she mumbles to herself. She kneels down and grabs the lead pipe from its place on the floor. She holds the weapon in her hand for a few moments before nodding and adding it to her inventory.
Thirty minutes later, she finds herself in front of The Daily Bread. It's the only place she hasn't checked yet. The entrance, of course, is locked, but for Elizabeth that's only a minor setback. She kneels in front of the door, getting straight to work.
"It has to be in here," she says to herself. "It has to be."
Not ten seconds later, she hears the familiar click of the door being unlocked. She stands and pushes the door open, heading inside.
The inside is, simply put, a pigsty.
Bottles of alcohol are scattered all over the place; on the bar, on tables, even on the floor. A destroyed security turret lays among the mess, and from the looks of it, it's been that way for a while. The smell of rotting food permeates the air, and Elizabeth wrinkles her nose in disgust. She soon finds out why-food lays at the tables, some of it half-eaten or barely touched. One dish in particular even has maggots writhing around on it. Elizabeth resists the urge to throw up.
"I don't remember it looking like this last time," she muses, as she avoids the broken glass of a bottle smashed roughly against the floor.
She collects herself quickly and gets to work on finding that oil can.
She doesn't find anything on the upper level (surprise, surprise), so she heads to the second level to find her much-coveted oil can.
She's walking downstairs when she hears something that gives her pause.
Is that...singing?
She stops to listen, holding her breath.
"In the house of upside down,
Cellar's top floor, attic's ground.
In the house of upside down,
Laughing cries and smiles frown.
In the house of upside down,
Found is lost and lost is found."
"What the hell?" she whispers.
It's a little girl. What the hell is a little girl doing in a place like this?
It's only when she hears the little girl say in a sing-song voice, "Come on, Mr. B! The angels don't wait for slowpokes!" that she realizes...oh.
That's not a little girl-that's a Little Sister.
Which means that-
Sure enough, not two seconds later she hears the responding groan of a Big Daddy as he picks the Little Sister up off the ground and places her on his shoulders.
It's a few seconds before she realizes they mean to head up the stairs, but the second she does, she runs. She runs and she doesn't stop until she's on the first level again.
She's panicking again. God, she hates panicking. She screws her eyes shut and thinks about what to do.
She can't run. She's never make it. The Big Daddy is way too fast, and if he sees her, he'll come after her.
She could hide, she supposes. A place like this has to have nooks and crannies to store things, though whether she would fit into any of them is another thing entirely.
She hears the Big Daddy coming up the stairs and realizes she's out of time. Thinking quickly, she ducks behind the counter and waits, eyes shut tight.
The Big Daddy is on the first level now. Elizabeth's eyes are still closed, but she can hear his big, heavy footsteps as they pass by the counter. She sighs with relief before realizing what she's done and clamping her mouth shut.
Fortunately, the Big Daddy doesn't seem to notice as he exits the bar, destroying the door as he does so. Elizabeth hears the Little Sister say, "Mr. B! You ruined the door!" as they leave.
She uncurls from her crouched position behind the counter as she opens her eyes. She heaves another sigh of relief and she looks over the counter, making sure she's truly alone before standing up.
She makes to go back downstairs when her foot hits something metal that rolls across the floor. She walks over to where it had stopped and stoops down to pick it up.
It's an oil can.
She shakes it a little. It's still got some oil in it.
She grins.
"Finally, some good luck today," she chuckles, making sure to grab it as she makes her way out of The Daily Bread.
Back at the bathysphere docks, Elizabeth prepares to radio Jack for further instructions. She places the oil can on the little pedestal that the lever is on and unhitches the radio from her hip. She presses the button, ready to speak, when the voice of Atlas stops her.
"Sounds like that should about do it. Head on back to Fontaine Fisheries when you're ready, Would You Kindly?"
Her heart stops.