When I go to look for cover, the first hiding place I find is a building less than a few feet from where I ended The Fireman. It is a restaurant called "The Blue Ribbon", and the sign outside of it displayed a large pig with a blue ribbon wrapped around it's stomach.
Well aware that I must keep moving, I push open the wooden double-doors and step inside of the building.
Inside I find a waiting room, furnished with two cushioned chairs and a small table. To the side of the wall are three kinetoscopes which claim to tell the history of Columbia.
On the table in the waiting room is a large bottle of that good good blue stuff that allows me to use my Plasmids and Vigors. Without second thought, I pick up the bottle in my hand. I uncork it, put the neck of the bottle to my mouth, and start to drink.
Bottoms up!
The blue nectar that Rapture calls EVE and that Columbia calls Salts tickles my tongue and throat as I suck it down, and I can feel a quickening in my veins and in my heart with every drop. While it does taste syrupy on it's own, this blue liquid also brings back some of the few non-horrible memories of Rapture that I have: healing myself after a hard battle, numbing myself with alcohol during precious moments of peace, and finally playing with The Little Sisters in Tenenbaum's Safehouse in the weeks between Atlas's death and my return to the surface.
There is no pure EVE Topside, so the only way I had to get it was by drinking alcohol (one of my Gene Tonics, Booze Hound, turns alcohol into EVE during blood circulation). There are no Splicers on the surface, but it is better to be safe than sorry. While some might have called this attitude paranoid, the events of the last few hours kinda proves it prudent.
Figuring that it is safe in this place, I decide to look at the Kinetoscopes.
They are very short films, only a few seconds total, but they provide some information on this crazy sky-prison I find myself in. It seems Comstock, like Andrew Ryan, set out to found an isolated city where he could peruse his Utopian vision unimpeded. But unlike Rapture, Comstock did so with the blessing of the outside world and only retreated from it after overstepping his authority during this "Boxer Rebellion".
I still do not know who the Boxers are or why they rebelled. Did they have valid reasons? And if so, did they pursue it with restrained tactics that spared the innocent? Of this and many other things I know nothing, as Atlas decided not to include those facts in the memories he "had tattooed inside my brain". However, that is not the worst of it; as my growth was accelerated, I will never know what it is like to be a child or to have a parent who truly cares for me.
The only thing I know for sure about my brief childhood, based not on memory but on an audio-diary I found while in Rapture, is that Dr. Suchong once used a trigger code to make me snap my puppy's neck against my will. I am forced to wonder what cruelty Elizabeth was subject to. Hopefully she will never know the savagery that I have known, and hopefully I can get her out of here safely.
When I enter the actual dining area of the restaurant, who else should greet me but Those Dammed Twins ...
Dammit! I still don't know what their game is, but I have a strong suspicion that they plan on stabbing me in the back.
As of now they are the only people in the restaurant, aside from an unconscious drunk at the bar. Robert is standing behind the bar, wiping it down with a white cloth. His sister is standing in front of the entrance to the kitchen, holding a plate with a bottle of yellow liquid on it.
"We have company" Robert Lutece stated, his voice cold and calculating as always.
"We do indeed" replied Rosalind Lutece, just as emotionless as her twin brother.
I can NOT take another moment of this.
"Why did you follow me?"
"We were already here." states Rosalind, answering my question without actually answering any questions.
Her brother adds, "Why are YOU following US?"
Really? Did they really just ask that? They really had to fucking ask that, did not they?
Well, now you're getting The Long Answer!
"You really want to know why I am here?!" I ask with a weary voice, one that makes it clear that this isn't nearly as funny for me as it seems to be for them. "I am here because I six months after escaping Hell On Earth two people I've never met before and have no reason to trust hired me to go to another, equally horrible city. Ostensibly this is rescue a woman and take her to New York, but I have no way if my employers are telling the truth! So tell me, why should I trust you? How do I know Elizabeth even exists, or that you aren't having me bring her to New York so you can just suck her blood or rip a slug out of her liver?! How do I know you won't stab me in the back the moment I cease to be useful to you?!"
By now I am frantic; I normally internalize my anxieties and keep them bottled up where others can not see them, and this is exactly why.
In order to avoid outbursting further, I take a deep breath and become silent again. The twins betray no facial expression to suggest how they might feel, but they do pause to think out their answer.
As always, they finish each others sentences.
"We do not Harvest ADAM-" stated Rosalind Lutece matter-of-factly.
"-and we are not going to try to kill you after the mission is complete." finished her brother Robert.
I retort, "You tortured an innocent man to death just to scare me. Was that supposed to convey trust?"
Robert Lutece snorts derisively, "The Lighthouse Guardian was far from innocent. If you knew how many Raffles he participated in, you would have killed him as well."
The Raffle; Columbia must have stoned at least one interracial couple every year since this city's founding. God, why are people so cruel?!
His sister continues. "Heuristic Techniques have failed you in this instance. We can not stop you if you choose to continue to believe the delusion that this is part of an Atlas-esque plot, but if you are a logical person than you should shortly become disabused of such notions in due time."
"If not, then that is your loss."
Now it is my turn to take a pause. Could I have misjudged these two? What if they sincerely have good intentions? It has happens before while I was in Rapture. But that's the problem: I have no way of knowing if The Lutece Twins will be like Atlas or like Tenenbaum.
Rosalind offers a drink. "Aperitif?"
"You'll find it handy in a pinch."
"The difference between life and death."
When Rosalind Lutece offers this, and when her brother encourages me to take it, I squint at the bottle she is holding. It is a bottle with a glowing yellow liquid inside.
That's a fucking Plasmid!
I pick it up and take the cork off. I do not know if this drink is the poison that will end me, but that does not seem as likely. I still don't trust them, but right in this moment them stabbing me in the back seems less likely. Deciding (perhaps foolishly) to place trust in my fellow man, I down the entire substance. It does not taste like ADAM; it taste more like how I image Electric Gel tasting (I do not know the exact taste of Electric Gel, because drinking every chemical in sight is NOT the way to survive in Rapture or anywhere else for that matter).
"Hm, surprising." Rosalind says, though she neither looks nor sounds surprised or for that matter even interested.
"Surprising that it worked?" suggests the less cynical of the two Lutece Twins.
"Surprising that it didn't kill him." corrects the more cynical of the two.
"But a magnetic-repulsive field around one's body can come in handy."
"If it doesn't kill you."
"A fair point."
My mouth twitches slightly as I try to suppress a smile. It would be cruel irony indeed if (after surviving 30 Big Daddies, one spliced Atlas, and all the splicers in Rapture) a Plasmid is what finally put me in the ground.
Rosalind steps aside, and I head through the kitchen. I make my way through the kitchen and the storage room behind it, scrounging any coins that happen to be around.
As I make my way through the storage room, I can hear announcements coming from a gunship outside. It does not appear to notice that I am here though, so I need only let it spew its lies until it passes by.
"Blood in the streets! And worse is the insult because today is the day that marks our succession from the Sodom below."
Sure, I'm the bad guy for interrupting their human sacrifice. The sooner I can complete this mission and be rid of this damn city the better ...
Once I am sure that the gunship has left, I walk out onto the back deck.
There is no drawbridge connecting this building to the ones on the other side of the gap ... but there is a freight hook and balcony on the other side of the gap.
Jack, are you really going to make such a suicidal leap?
Even as I've asked this question I've already gripped my sky-hook and backed up for a running start. Without further thought, I rush forward and jump with everything I have.
"Ahhhhhh!"
I expected my sky-hook to grip the balcony, but instead it immediately rushes to the freight hook and pulls me along. The sky-hook connects to the freight hook with a clank, and I am left hanging by my arm.
I am sure there is some scientific explanation for this, but for now it eludes me. I can find out what it is when people aren't trying to kill me.
I look about my location to see if I can find another location from here (making sure to not look down, of course).
There are five more sky-hooks between me and the nearest rooftop.
Well, no time like the present ...