"So, that was your answer..." a deep, gurgly voice spoke.
"Hmm?" Eleanor lifted her head; was she sleeping while sitting in the plane seat? No, everything was black, she saw no one. A little alarmed, Eleanor stood up. She obviously wasn't on the plane anymore.
Oddly enough, despite neverending blackness in all directions, shadows did not exist. Eleanor could see herself, even the plane seat, yet there was no darkness amidst the blackness. Such a contradictory realization caused Eleanor to raise an eyebrow. She noticed something with the corner of her eye. A pool of glowing blood slowly flowed towards her. Beyond the pool of blood, she heard a faintly echoing beating heart, soon accompanied by dripping and slow, deep breathing.
"You again? I thought you were just a bad dream," Eleanor remarked. She crossed her arms.
"Hrrmmrr..." the voice grumbled. He walked, footfall causing blood to spatter with every step, yet Eleanor could not see him. The pool of blood rippled, Spirry's breathing, beating heart, and dripping louder.
Eleanor could gradually see some sort of immense frame resembling transparent faint blueness, having several glowing masses in some sort of bipedal shape. Looking at the strange entity rather hurt Eleanor's eyes, as the imagery slightly shifted side to side and was blurry when doing so. She also heard static and tuning, reminding her of a bad radio signal.
The entity was obviously ghostly, yet its body dripped glowing blood wherever veins would be, and whenever the entity exhaled, blood leaked out where the mouth would be.
Eleanor frowned. If this is Spirry, he's immense... At least nine feet tall.
"You chose to give the baby back to her father," Spirry remarked.
"Did I?" Eleanor asked, unable to remember anything.
"You did. Now, the cycle will continue, at least for now. I do not have any commiserations, but I was hoping to do some unbreaking. No matter. The child you did not rescue...she will find a way, eventually."
"Ah, so you were keeping things from me," Eleanor said. "Bringing me to this...place... What do you want from me, Mr. Spirry?"
"You are an educated lady, Ms. Lamb, so you'll have to figure this out on your own," Spirry replied.
She huffed. "You really are just like Mother, always playing some damn game... But if you won't stop haunting me with whatever custom Plasmids you possess, I'll have to go along with it. If you think I have the power to...release you...from your ghostly form, I cannot. I've only heard rumours of ghosts in Rapture but they ended long ago. I know little of them other than they are ADAM and memories, affecting parts of the city," Eleanor explained. She watched the ghostly figure slowly walk side to side.
"So it may surprise you that's not what I need," Spirry replied, then paused. "Not at all. I can revert to a physical form in your world, as I had done when I saw you twice in Sligo. Both times, you almost saw me, first at the church, then again in Father Ó Gallachóir's home."
"What?" Eleanor demanded while letting her arms drop and clenching her fists, a little embarrassed and angry at the thought of this creep always so near.
"You see, I am not concerned about whatever I could want from you, nor is this a demand of you. We are done with the past. Now, it is about what I can learn from you. Your thoughts, your memories, your drives, your ambitions..." Spirry continued, walking a short ways then turning to look at Eleanor.
"So for you, I am a test. An experiment."
"Consider it a blessing in disguise, as your mother would say. Don't you see? This is also a benefit for me. How you see me now...a ghost...this is something I learned from Rapture, through what is inside you," Spirry explained.
This got Eleanor's immediate attention. "Wait, let me think... Did you just imply you are learning about ADAM? So whatever abilities you possess, you had before you learnt of Rapture..."
"Not only that, Ms. Lamb, though I won't tell you my origins. As you know, ADAM is like a benign cancer, replacing cells to create new possibilities. I am like a benign cancer to ADAM. My body replaces ADAM cells, and create new possibilities. ADAM is a canvas of genetics, but ADAM is just one colour of my painting."
"What? How? What kind of laboratory do you have?" Eleanor asked, rather amazed. If Spirry really was some sort of successor of ADAM yet also predated it, then whatever powers he had, were truly formidable.
"My mind and body is my laboratory. All my science is performed biologically," Spirry answered.
Eleanor furrowed her eyebrows, in deep thought. She placed a hand under her chin and pondered. If Spirry himself is some sort of walking bio-laboratory, then he has no need of papers, vials, instruments, tools, computers...or any technological devices whatsoever. Spirry was, undoubtedly, the apex scientist: a researcher and a laboratory combined in one body.
"And my mind...was perfected with ADAM when Mother kept me sedated...and you bonded with my mind before we first met..." Eleanor said to herself, then slowly looked back at Spirry, who just started walking towards her. The blurriness made him hard to see; he came close to Eleanor. "Spirry!" Eleanor almost shouted, taking a step forward and leaning into his ghostly form, looking up at him, not at all intimidated that he was nine feet tall.
He stopped.
Now that the two stood so closely, Eleanor could almost feel the force of his heartbeat. Contrary to his ghostly form, Spirry's exhaled breath flowed around Eleanor's head, and she smelled traces of ADAM, but it had a strong scent of blood, clearly more blood than ADAM.
"That baby girl, what does she have to do with this?" Eleanor demanded.
"If only you had done what I told you, her entire life would have been different. I would have been able to bond with her, and learn of her potential. But no, you had to give her back to her stupid father, and this changed everything. I will now have to go back in time to find her, again! And I haven't the slightest clue how to start," Spirry replied, clearly irritated despite his recent efforts to remain stoic.
"Not even my own mother could control me, why did you bother trying? Well, you almost succeeded," Eleanor teased, feeling the pool of Spirry's blood reach her toes and begin to soak her socks.
"I thought I could, because I bonded with you, and because of how your mother raised you. I expected you to be a Utopian, and serve the common good without question. But even all of this is just a chemical reaction, and you are the one who gives it meaning by choice. I never would have guessed you were able to resist a bonding by choice. You must have somehow learned this upon freeing the Little Sisters," Spirry spoke.
"With the help of Father, I am free, Mr. Spirry, but you are not. You know nothing of me, and you don't even know yourself. You see the world through an idea you created. For you, everything is an experiment with a goal; nothing else exists in your mindset. And if you can't achieve your goals, you will ruin everything, and bring everyone down to your level of destruction. You've made the same mistakes as Ryan, Fontaine, and Mother."
Eleanor was now glad Mother raised her with lectures of psychology and philosophy. This would help her in understanding Spirry, though she kept most of it in her head, having a feeling her blurry friend could partly read her mind. Nevertheless, she made a stern face and leaned at Spirry some more, not taking her eyes off his ghostly visage.
"And just look at you. You are always hiding. You never had a father, did you? Oh, well, I still want to know you, Mr. Spirry, as ruined as you are. Why not reveal yourself?" Spirry kept quiet, or perhaps hesitated. This irritated Eleanor. "You are petrified of rejection, failure, life and death. What else can you be but a useless, worthless monster? You are just like your father and mother, they are also useless monsters. Think about your father, and know that if only your father could have learned from mine... He would be a real father."
Spirry seemed to hold in a chuckle, more blood than usual briefly leaking out his mouth. He slowly cocked his head, and clasped his hands behind his back. "No matter how many insults you think of, there is no name for what I am, Eleanor. But with your help, they will never see me coming," was all Spirry said.
Eleanor did not know why, but what he said felt... familiar. "Go ahead, have a head start, make it last. We both know how this ends."
"No, neither of us can know how this ends. There is a constancy, and then there are variables, Eleanor. I do not know if you are a constance or a variable, but I know that you are the Lamb. This is a blessing you have yet to realize."
Before Eleanor could say anything else, she awoke, again. She was sitting in a plane seat, and felt someone tugging at her dress. She looked to see who it was.
"Eleanor! The plane already landed, we gotta go! Don't be a slowpoke, we can't wait for slowpokes!" Cindy said, one arm around Little Daddy.
Eleanor furrowed her eyebrows, and looked out the window. What happened? Did she have another dream?
"Hunh... How did he..." Eleanor heard static and tuning sounds from within her head. This caused a headache, but it did not bother Eleanor, who was used to mental stress. She felt Cindy pulling on her dress again, so Eleanor looked at the girl.
"Eleanor, you're bleeding," Cindy said.
Eleanor touched her own nose, noticing blood on her fingertips.