The mechanical things pulled her into a cold, dark, damp world, a red spotlight cast upon her. Pinkerton Elizabeth fell onto her front, face slapping against a wet floor, as her arms were still bound against her body. The mechanical limbs dragged her through the darkness, and all Elizabeth could do was helplessly squirm.
"Booker!" Elizabeth cried, hearing her voice echo, but there was no reply. She tried to wriggle free, but the mechanical limbs gripped her tightly, and painfully.
Elizabeth tried to see what was going on, but there was mostly just darkness everywhere. Sometimes, she saw swaying light blinking here and there, which gave sporadic, brief illumination. Soon, her clothes and hair felt soaked, and she smelled blood.
Despite her entrapment, she managed to form a Tear. The Tear affected the mechanical things, distorting them between the past and present. This allowed Elizabeth to writhe free, whatever having grabbed her moving on without her. She rolled sideways, got up, and ran away, covering her mouth with her arm, breathing through the cloth to filter the smell of blood a little.
"Where am I? Uhh...look what you got yourself into..." she mumbled to herself. But, she was a tough little lady, and it would take more than a dark world to break her.
Directly ahead of her, she could see lighting, so instinctively headed for it. The blinking lights revealed narrow mechanical things hanging from the darkness above, sometimes hanging in batches, sometimes slightly spaced apart. Some reached the floor, others ended several feet above the floor, and a portion lied for several feet along the floor.
The hanging things consisted of various types of chains and machinery: roller chains, immense lengths of coiled wiring, jack chains, gear trains, valves, pistons, pivots, rotaries, timing belts, tubes, pulleys, flickering fluorescent tubes, transistors, circuits, and God knows what else. Sometimes, electric arcs formed between the mechanical things. She noticed that some of the mechanical lengths swayed on their own, or slithered on the spot. They reminded her of what she had seen hanging from the sky in New York.
To make things worse, she did not know why, but Elizabeth had a feeling she was being watched. Off in the distance, looking through the forest of hanging things, she saw the silhouette of someone. The silhouette was quite huge, and she could hear steady beating. Duhn, duh...duhn, duh...duhn, duh...duhn, duh... A loud heartbeat? The flickering lights never revealed much, but it seemed that the silhouette was something big and red.
The silhouette then started walking towards Elizabeth, bulky frame causing the mechanical things in its way to swing away. Turning around, Elizabeth ran off, pushing herself through the suspended vines of machinery.
"Where the hell am I?" she asked herself nervously, feeling her heart jumping into her throat.
She ran into a set of mechanical things that refused to budge, bouncing off it, then paused. Lights nearby flickered, revealing silhouettes of arms, legs, heads, split torsos, scalps, hearts, brains, internal organs, rib cages, spines, pelvises, eyeballs, curtains of skin, and other bodily things caught in the machinery.
All the mechanical lengths around Elizabeth gently swayed or slithered on their own, sometimes wrapping around each other. She turned around, seeing more of the machinery decorated with body parts, guts, and bones, intestines wiggling amongst them. The machinery was moving, encircling Elizabeth.
A few more lights flickered here and there. A few zaps and sparks came. Elizabeth heard the heartbeat again. She didn't want to look, but she heard the hanging machinery swaying, rattling midair, and footfall accompanied by clicking sounds.
She didn't know where to go, so she stepped backwards, away from the footfall. Her back touched something moist, warm, and poky. She breathed slowly and heavily, sternum churning, blood tingling under her skin, the swaying machinery of macabre closing in on her.
As fluorescent tubes flickered, she saw the immense silhouette again, walking gently through the mechanical lengths, sometimes grasping them and sliding its hands down them. He walked diagonally across her, heartbeat, breathing and footfall louder and louder, her eyes locked on his flickering frame. Forehead sweating, Elizabeth looked away, eyes big and shiny.
"You wanted to see..." a deep, gurgly voice spoke, Elizabeth feeling blood spatter over the side of her face and shoulder.
More machinery closed in, drenched in blood, covered with chunks of bodies. He just stood there, nine feet tall, and he slowly leaned over Elizabeth. She felt his breath flow down her shirt. Her eyes darted amongst the mechanical lengths swaying with body parts.
Elizabeth looked at him. He was horrible to look at, more of an animal than a person, his heart always audibly beating, which Elizabeth found quite unnerving. He stood at nine feet tall, powerfully built, yet had a narrow waist. His skinless flesh had a milky texture, all the bulging veins blue. His forehead was roundly large and elongated, smoothly curving down to his mouth. He had nostrils, but no nose.
His eye sockets were empty, replaced with cracked glass lenses that currently shone bright yellow, shining upon Elizabeth's face. He had a rather small mouth, lips unable to cover his serpentine fangs and reptilian teeth. His mouth was constantly leaking blood, always bloody from chin to crotch.
He wore a sleeveless black leather duster, left unbuttoned down the front, and black leather pants, but no shoes, standing on his elongated clawed forefoot. He did not have a belt, his pants instead having a series of hooks set into his flesh. Instead of tendons, he had thin wire rope, visible over his pale tissue.
A glass shield took the place of his belly, the top bolted into his rib cage, the bottom bolted into his hips, his internal organs and beating visible through the glass. Curiously enough, his heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, bladder, gall bladder, appendix, and colon, all writhed constantly, he also having a uterus despite being male. His organs were dark cyan in color, and had orange spots down the sides.
Elizabeth heard static and tuning, faint but screechy. This time, it did not come from her. It came from him. Indistinct yellow lightning shone out his mouth and veins. Blood began leaking out his mouth and nostrils, through the cracks in his glass eyes, and even bubbled out wherever his veins were present.
"Now you see," he said, then slowly cocked his head, and grinned, blood leaking in-between his reptile teeth. After a moment, he looked down, seeing a big revolver planted against his heart.
She kept pulling the trigger. The third shot brought him down to one knee. Elizabeth then began shooting him in the head, but even after emptying the chambers, with blood gushing out his big head, he did not hit the floor.
Without thinking, Elizabeth dove to the side just as various mechanical lengths whipped forth, striking Spirry instead of her. They drilled into him, but he simply ripped them out of himself and stood up. The yellow beaming out his eyes scanned the area, the machinery swaying, but Elizabeth was simply gone. She simply vanished, just like she used to do with Booker and Zachary ten years ago.
"Where are you? This should not have happened, the Cipher remains unbroken. Hmm..." Spirry huffed, looking side to side. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked through the machinery, wondering where the girl went.
Elizabeth kept running and panting, until her lungs and feet stung. She ran around a knotted section of mechanical things, breathing heavily. Hands shaking, she opened her revolver, empty shells falling out, then reloaded her gun.
"He sure as hell won't be ripping me apart alive..."
After catching her breath, Elizabeth noticed a...leak? She stepped to the source of leaking, which had already made a puddle. It didn't look like blood. She extended her empty left hand, feeling the liquid rinse off the blood. She then brought her hand to her lips, and tasted the liquid.
"Salty water?" she asked, quite confused.
Unable to figure it out, she holstered her gun and continued her walk, and promptly tripped over the tip of a mechanical length. As she fell, she instinctively extended her hands to catch something, but only felt her hands get scraped open by the mechanical things.
Elizabeth's cut hands slapped against the flooring, splashing blood over her face and chest, causing her to close her eyes, frown, and clench her teeth from disgust. As blood dripped down her face, Elizabeth opened her eyes, and saw someone staring back at her.
Elizabeth reared her head, pausing with a disgusted look. There was a huge skinless face under a crevice in the floor, absent of eyelids. The mouth was open, bundled wiring visibly going from underneath the flooring into the face's mouth. The eyeballs were moving up and down slowly, cluelessly.
Getting up, Elizabeth walked backwards, away from that weird face, and then felt one foot not touch anything.
"Oh-whoa!" She fell backwards off a ledge, pawing at the air, then splat on a soft, wet, warm surface. She sat up, feeling her hair stick to her neck. The reek of blood was so strong here, she gagged.
Looking up, Elizabeth could see that the mechanical lengths did not hang down to here, but the flickering lights still illuminated whatever area Elizabeth had fallen into. She clenched her hands against the ground, and felt...teeth? She looked down, seeing the fingers of her right hand gripping a jaw, feeling the teeth and tongue.
Looking around herself, Elizabeth realized she had fallen onto a ground made of skinless, grotesque, twisted, distorted faces. The faces were compressed so tightly together, some bent in odd angles, or were missing jaws. Many of the faces were breathing steadily, and some slid their long, skinny tongues in and out.
"Uugh!" Elizabeth exclaimed, pulling her hands to her chest, raising her shoulders, and standing up. She began tap dancing, trying to not stand on an ugly face, but no matter where she put her feet, she stood on something's face, high heels digging into eyes and mouths.
Few by few, the grotesque faces began opening their tiny eyes, all of them staring at Elizabeth. She froze. Then, few by few, the faces began squirming against themselves, but they were quite stuck. Feeling them vibrate under her feet was not a welcoming sign.
Turning around to see where she had fallen off from, Elizabeth saw a wall of vertical bars, going off in either direction endlessly. Packed behind the bars were skinless, fleshy bodies, totally deformed and stretched out in awkward angles. Many arms and legs stuck out from behind the bars, slowly reaching out to Elizabeth, some faces groaning. More and more faces behind the bars, and underneath Elizabeth, began groaning as well.
"Oh, c'mon, come on, please, please, please..." Elizabeth quivered, unable to stop herself from shaking, gripping the air and trying to open a Tear. But nothing happened. She grunted from anger and fear.
"UUUHHHNNNNNN..." something groaned loudly, Elizabeth feeling warm, stinky air flow past her, causing her to retch.
Once she knew she would not puke, Elizabeth paused, hesitated, then slowly turned her head, two giant yellow spotlights beaming upon her. Her mouth dropped at what she saw.
Towering above her, was some sort of skull-shaped metal mask made of crisscrossing metal bars, the mask perhaps twenty feet tall and sixteen feet wide. The mask had lenses for the eyes, currently beaming yellow.
Wearing the mask was a mountain of deformed, skinless, fleshy bodies, mashed together into a single mass, with arms, legs, and heads were sticking out everywhere. The arms and legs served as locomotion, and the giant monster slowly crawled towards Elizabeth, moving alongside the wall. The arms atop it sometimes grasped the hanging mechanical things and pulled on them. Sliding in and out of the mask's mouth were a pair of fifteen-foot-long skinless arms, grasping the floor of faces to pull itself faster.
"Uhhh...nuh-uh..." Elizabeth steadily jogged away, not caring that her high heels were crushing eyeballs and digging into faces.
It was not long until she saw bodies gradually emerging from the fleshy ground. The bodies were quite gangly, seven feet tall but extremely skinny, little more than elongated skeletons with tendons, veins, tiny organs, and a thin layer of flesh. Several of the grotesque, deformed things walked after Elizabeth, their movement twitchy and awkward, joints constantly making popping sounds.
Elizabeth didn't wait. She pulled out her revolver and opened fire. After emptying her chambers, she had shot dead only three monsters. One of the things dropped on its hands, and crawled at Elizabeth with surprising speed. She skipped backwards, but it grabbed her legs and wanted to bite her crotch. Grimacing and making weird desperate noises, Elizabeth repeatedly clubbed the ugly thing with her revolver. She soon managed to slip away, but the monster crawled after her.
Two dozen feet away, the giant masked monster continued crawling in all its ugly glory, sometimes snailing over the skinny monsters and crushing them. The giant monster's speed gradually increased, and one by one, more of the skinny monsters began uprooting.
Sensing a Tear, Elizabeth instantly snapped it into existence. A Motorized Patriot stepped forth, and Elizabeth ran past it.
"For the glory of Columbia, death to the Lovecraftian spawn!" he exclaimed, crank gun ripping. He gunned down most of the skinny monsters. Those that reached him, he simply swatted down with his gun, then stomped on them.
The Patriot's weight caused him to sink into the fleshy floor, but he continued shooting as the giant masked monster loomed over him. He did not relent, and continued firing into the juggernaut, even as the skinny monsters leapt upon him.
The masked monster's mouth-arms extended, grabbing the Patriot's legs and pulling him down. He sat up, and continued firing at point-blank range. The many arms sticking out the mountain of flesh clutched at him and his gun, gradually disarming him. He punched back at the things, grabbing arms and heads and cracking them, but he was overcome.
Elizabeth continued running, sometimes losing her footing or almost tripping, but managed to stay on her feet.
No way I'm falling down on those faces... she promised herself.
Off in the distance, the flickering lights from above revealed groups of more skinny monsters running towards her, screeching and wheezing. She gasped, and skid to a stop.
"I'm surrounded..." Elizabeth said to herself. She checked her pockets, but could not feel any bullets. Her heart dropped. "No! I'm not going to die here!" she exclaimed at her foes, refusing to be a frightened girl.
Suddenly, she felt something, and made a Mosquito appear. It flew quite low, firing at the incoming enemies, so Elizabeth did the only thing she could think of. She holstered her revolver, then jumped upon the Mosquito, hugging the cords holding the balloons, and feeling the rotary shred the edge of her skirt.
Up the Mosquito flew, slowly but steadily, Elizabeth with it. She lifted her shoulders as the monsters jumped up at her, but the rotary chopped into their fingers, and continued flying and shooting. She sighed with relief.
Good thing I'm so small...
Once she could reach the hanging machinery, Elizabeth sat on the Mosquito and grabbed the mechanical things, pulling them, and so guiding the Mosquito where to fly. She was able to drag herself away from the giant masked monster. Not even that could do anything now!
Elizabeth soon reached the level of flooring she had fallen from, and hopped down there. While the Mosquito kept the monsters busy, Elizabeth ran as fast as she could, skipping in-between the machinery hanging everywhere.
"The only way out of here is through a Tear..." she whispered to herself. Elizabeth focused hard, raising her hands, and clutched the fabric of space-time. She pulled, hard. Nothing. She flicked her hands at the air in frustration, then put them on her hips. "Oh, come on, we were doing so well a few minutes ago... Oh well, no point staying here."
As Elizabeth made her way through the forest of hanging metal things, she heard rattling behind her. She stopped with an inhale, and listened. The machinery behind her moved around noisily, accompanied by clanking. Something was approaching her.
"Spirry..."
She hid behind a hanging batch of mechanical things. Leaning out of cover, she could see something moving through the mechanical lengths. Amidst the flickering lights, Elizabeth could make out that the thing had a mechanical serpentine body, perhaps two feet thick. The body had a length of twenty feet, but the tail gradually curled upwards and was so long it disappeared into the darkness above. Instead of a snake head was a giant mechanical hand, reminding Elizabeth of a Handyman's hand. The fingers served as its means of locomotion.
The hand rested on its thumb, then the four fingers began tapping against the floor. Impatient? The mechanical serpent slowly reared, holding its head-hand up, then the fingers uncurled. The palm revealed a large lens that opened, beaming a yellow light. Beneath the lens seemed to be a mouth-like opening, and slithering in and out were a series of mechanical lengths similar to those hanging everywhere, but much smaller.
"Huh... That's what grabbed me..." Elizabeth whispered, then heard the serpent roar like a car engine, smoke flowing out its mouth, its light turning red.
Elizabeth held her breath, regretting she had opened her mouth. The red lighting waved side to side, but did not seem to notice her.
"Vurr-rrr..." the serpent growled, lighting changing to yellow.
The yellow spotlight travelled along the flooring here and there. Elizabeth moved her head behind her cover as the spotlight shone across her hiding spot, but nothing happened. After a few seconds, the serpent suddenly closed its hand. Elizabeth peeked, seeing the hand open up suddenly, and her eyebrows raised. The thing opened up a Tear!
Through the Tear, Elizabeth could see a street of New York, and saw someone quickly walking down the street, a young brunette in jeans and a black shirt.
"Eleanor..." Elizabeth whispered as the serpent slid through the Tear. The Tear remained open, but only the front half of the serpent went beyond the Tear. The rest of its body remained somewhere up above in the darkness.
"Ughh, that stupid snake thing takes up all the space in the Tear. I can't sit around here..." Elizabeth whispered. Well then, now's my chance... Elizabeth thought to herself, and scurried away. She smiled.
Maybe I can't control all the Tears, but I still have my wish-fulfillment!
Scurrying off yet again, she later heard...chiming? It sounded like a children's xylophone. It quietly echoed, having a soothing but hopeless feel. The gentle music was Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat major, opus 9, number 2, played slowly.
Elizabeth followed the music, legs feeling like jelly after so much running and walking. After a few minutes, she sighed with relief. The forest of hanging mechanical things ended up ahead. Although it was just darkness over there, it was better than being surrounded by machinery that potentially wanted to butcher people alive.
Excitedly running, almost tripping a few times, Elizabeth escaped the horrid vines. She then heard...waves? She walked forth, rather confused. She soon found herself staring at a vast, dark ocean, the waters aggressive and chaotic. Big waves smashed against the island, throwing water high into the air. The sky was cloudy, flashing with lightning here and there, yet it was silent.
When Elizabeth looked out in the waters, the lightning allowed her to see the silhouettes of skeletal corpses floating underneath the water's surface. Creepily enough, all the corpses appeared to be trying to swim, yet they moved so slowly, and could never surface.
Elizabeth walked on for a while, reaching the end of the island. She turned around to check on the realm she had apparently left. Back there, she saw nothing but mechanical ruins, so vast, its extent disappeared beyond the dark horizon. Immense chains, and mechanical lengths akin to those she had seen earlier, stretched out into the horizon.
Waves splashed against the island of metallic ruination, but then, she heard it again. The nocturne... So, she followed the music, walking towards the waters. As she walked, bricks materialised from thin air, quickly floating into place, creating a real-time bridge for Elizabeth.
Occasionally, other passages formed, and she would stop, and listen. The music always came back, and she followed it through the various passages. She saw other islands, but they were always scrapyards, with mechanical lengths extending into the horizons.
As Elizabeth walked, the path led her to yet another island, but it too, was nothing but a junkyard of broken machinery. However, she saw a bathosphere floating nearby, cracked wide open, but still afloat. The skeletal corpses near the bathosphere reached for it, but were never able to go inside. Floating nearby was a small doll of a Big Daddy, which put a smile on Elizabeth's face.
The path then revealed two things to Elizabeth, two things that made her stop. She stood in silence, just staring at a chair, and a guitar leaning against it. She remembered when... When Booker found a guitar, and played it. So, she sang a song, and gave a boy an apple.
The screechy static and tuning came back, Elizabeth getting a headache. She wiped her nose of the blood, temples throbbing. She put her fingers together, shoulders low, face solemn.
"That Booker... I miss him so much..." Elizabeth whispered. She then heard the nocturne playing again. She grabbed the guitar and lifted it, strings singing, and she followed the nocturne.
After a few minutes of following the music amidst forming bridges with twists and turns, Elizabeth reached another island. The island in its entirety was just blackness and shadows, with shadowy machinery stretching off into the night sky. Elizabeth then realized something.
"There are no lighthouses." She looked up, "There are no stars... There's just...interconnected destruction." She silently thought to herself. No lighthouses, no stars. "Then...there really is only one world left."
Her heart skipped a few beats. But then, she heard the music again, so she continued her trek, hugging Booker's guitar.
The walk was long and lonely. Skeletal corpses in the water, waves, flashes of lightning, and the xylophone music were her only companions.
"Or, maybe...maybe... Since I can't open any Tears, and can't see the doors, maybe my world was already destroyed? And now, only I exist, in the Sea of Doors..." Elizabeth looked into the waters full of corpses.
If this was Styx, she would have the rest of her life to reflect about nothingness. She turned her head, seeing blackness swirling ever so slowly after her, enshrouding everything in shadow.
Elizabeth walked on and on, endlessly, her feet and ankles burning. It was difficult to carry the guitar, but she would hold onto it, for Booker, even if she didn't exist anymore. Occasionally, she tried to open Tears, but they never worked. She would hear the xylophone less often, but still followed after the music. She hoped she never made a wrong turn this entire time, but that simply tune, was her hope.
But hope never came.
"Uhh... How much longer? I can't... I can't do this anymore..." Elizabeth said weakly, then she fell onto her knees, nearly smashing the guitar against the bricks. Once her feet stopped moving, the rush of burning intensified, and she grimaced. "Ahhh-haa-haa-huh-huh! It hurts... It hurts so much..." she complained, but there was no one to comfort her.
Looking back, Elizabeth could see the darkness behind her. Most of the scenery was simply gone, just blank blackness. No seas, so lightning, no bridges, no islands, just black.
Elizabeth whimpered, then wept as the blackness swirled towards her ever so slowly, yet relentlessly. She sniffled.
"I'd rather just... Crawl in a hole, and fucking die." Her head dropped. Those words hurt her much more than she expected.
Wind blew across her, carrying a familiar red cape with it, which landed in front of Elizabeth. The cape was just missing its eyeless wearer. As much as she hated to admit it, she wouldn't even mind Michael being with her, anyone was better than no one.
Then, she heard it again. The nocturne. She sniffled, and rubbed her nose with her sleeve. Elizabeth picked herself up just as the blackness crept up on her skirt, erasing some of the shredded edge. She would go forwards, no matter how much her body ached.
Elizabeth found a strange entity at the end of the sea, the waters leading to an endless drop-off into the horizon. The entity resembled a Tear, but in a tubular form. The tubular Tear spiralled off into the horizon, and the music echoed from the tube. She smiled, and entered the Tear.
Inside the Tear was smoothing, yet lonely. She walked through a tunnel of blackness, yet was rimmed with brightness and warmth. But she still heard the music, and followed her ears.
After the final note of the song was struck, Elizabeth, at long last, saw the xylophone. The last note finished its voice, yet there was no player. There was only a twist of fate.
"Wait, what? I...I don't...I don't understand this..." Elizabeth mumbled to herself. "Think, just think... Alright, the music... It played after, after... After I died? When the other Elizabeth found me dead... And I heard it here. Then, I found Booker's guitar... Oh, and also saw the Big Daddy doll floating... Then, Michael's cape flew by..." Memories and ideas raced through Elizabeth's mind.
Thinking about Michael's cape brought back memories of what he had said to her. Michael's voice, although distorted and echoing, sounded in her head.
"Your father dreamt of a flood of fire, a rapture from the baptism of flames..."
"He wanted to see you rapture to your potential, your fate..."
"But suffering is its own baptism and its own rapture, isn't it?"
"And Enigma shall be the rapture from the baptism of this last world..."
What did all that mean? Elizabeth concentrated, and using just her thoughts, opened a Tear. A Tear, inside another Tear? She stepped in, and felt herself teleporting back into reality, but very slowly.
During the teleportation, Elizabeth kept thinking about Michael's words. Then, there was something about them that clicked in Elizabeth's head. She again heard Michael's voice echoing in her head.
"...rapture from the baptism of flames..."
"...rapture to your potential, your fate..."
"...rapture, isn't it?"
"...rapture from the baptism of this last world..."
Elizabeth reappeared in New York, but not where she had left. A short distance away, she saw blue Elizabeth comforting old Elizabeth, who was sobbing. Booker and Zachary kept an eye out, and off in the distance, lied several dead fleshy monsters. Nobody noticed her appear.
Elizabeth sternly approached everyone. Since none of them realized she appeared, she raised her guitar and strummed all the strings strongly. Zachary and Booker spun around, aiming their revolvers, and the Elizabeths lifted their heads in surprise.
"Elizabeth! You're back!" Zachary exclaimed, grabbing his heart and nearly falling over.
"Yes, she is! But, how..." old Elizabeth said, surprised yet happy, wiping her tears away with the back of her hands.
"See? Told ya she'd be back," Booker remarked.
"The chances of that are...a billion, billion to one!" blue Elizabeth commented.
Michael's voice continued booming in Pinkerton Elizabeth's head, "...rapture...rapture...rapture...rapture..."
Pinkerton Elizabeth stood before everyone, one foot forwards, looking terribly exhausted, but confident. She stared at Zachary, and he at her.
"We're getting Eleanor, then we're going back to Rapture."