DISCLAIMER - I Own Nothing, Nothing!
A/N – Here's the chapter where I'm going to start taking a lot more liberties. Bear with me.
Jack awakened in the arms of an angel. Her halo was made of golden curls that seemed to shimmer as a beam of light emanated from her smooth, radiant skin. Emerald eyes peered down at Jack from beneath a large pair of glasses.
"It moves," she said, slowly and without even a hint of emotion.
"Neat," came another voice. A young boy, wearing blue jean bib overalls with matching blue cap and gloves, crawled closer, anxiously.
"Here," the woman continued in her emotionless, husky tone. Jack could now see that the glow wasn't coming from her, but from a spotlight high above her head. She pressed a glass bottle to his lips. "Drink this."
Jack took a sip of the flat, bitter liquid.
"What is that?"
"It's a tonic."
"What's a tonic?"
The woman cradling Jack's head rolled her eyes.
"You know, like gin and tonic?" she said. "But without the gin. I'd offer you a proper drink, but old Wilkins drank all our alcohol."
Jack followed her gaze to a weathered old man with a distinct potbelly, wearing an outfit nearly identical to the boy's, but made from orange leather.
The woman poured some more of the tonic into Jack's mouth. He noticed a small picture of a bad with a medical insignia on the bottle's label.
"Medical expert?"
"That's what happens when you let scientists create your beverages. They have to try to be clever by adding little 'boosts' to their tonic water. Memory boost, mood boost, nutrition boost. Twitch here is a big fan of the SportBoost."
"I haven't slept in a month!" the kid said, smiling.
"Where am I?" Jack asked.
"You're in the Footlight Theater," the woman answered. Jack looked around at the fancy red carpet, the spotlights, and the small stage. It made sense. "At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Welcome to Rapture."
Jack tried to sit up, panicked. Every part of him ached.
"I must be dreaming," he said.
The woman stood up, dropping him hard on his back. Jack moaned loudly.
"This is reality," she said. "The sooner you accept that, the longer you'll live. I'm Dr. Julie Langford. I brought you here, bandaged your wounds."
"Lucky I found a doctor, then."
"Not that lucky, because I'm not that kind of doctor. I'm a botanist."
"Huh?"
"A scientist who studies plants."
"He's asked enough questions." Another woman stepped near to Jack. "It's our turn now."
Jack recognized the Irish accent he had heard somewhere between hazy consciousness and utter blackness. She had silky brown hair, cut into a neat bob, and was studying him intensely with a pair of blue eyes the size of saucers. Her face was composed of rough, sharp angles, and she was wearing a man's outfit, a dirty white tank top and gray trousers, that hugged her distinctly feminine curves.
"First of all, why'd we bring you here? You're not going to be any good to us if you can't even stand up."
It burnt like Hell, but Jack somehow managed to find his way to his knees. He reached out, but no one offered their hand to help him up. Twitch looked like he was considering it, but one look from the Irish girl's flashing blue eyes made him stand relatively still, though he kept tapping his foot and cracking his fingertips.
Jack slowly stood up. The aching began to dull, and the theater started coming into focus. There was another girl standing to the side. She resembled the Irish girl, with the same silky brown hair, but worn long, down to her chest. She was noticeably younger and shorter, wearing a woman's blouse and skirt that were torn, filthy, and generally worse for wear, a revolver protruding from the skirt tight against her waist. She was the only woman, out of the three in the theater, wearing a fresh coat of make-up.
"We couldn't ha' just left 'im to those t'ings out there, Evelyn."
"I don't see why we couldn't ha', Teagan." As she turned to face the younger girl, Jack noticed a revolver tucked into the small of her back.
"Those . . . things . . ." Jack said. "That attacked me. Zombies?"
Dr. Langford laughed.
"Zombies?"
"Sounds like somebody reads too many dime novels," Teagan said.
"Those weren't zombies," Dr. Langford added. "Those were Splicers."
"Splicer? What's a splicer?"
"You really are new to Rapture," Evelyn said.
"You ask too many questions," Dr. Langford said, "and we don't have time to answer them all right now."
"Now then," Evelyn said, pacing, "who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Jack looked past her, to the row of silent faces beyond. A muscular figure, nearly seven feet tall, in a V-neck; an eerily thin Black man in what had once been an expensive suit; a short man with the facial structure of a weasel, with thin, jagged mustaches and a wide-brimmed hat; another muscular figure, nearly the same size as the first, covered in ammunition and holding a Tommy gun.
"I . . . I was in a plane crash."
"In the middle of the ocean? How did you survive?"
"I . . . I don't know. I managed to swim to this lighthouse, and I got in some sort of . . . bronze bubble . . ."
"Impossible!" Evelyn snapped. "The bathyspheres haven't been operational. No one in or out of Rapture for t'e past six mont's."
"I don't think he's lying, sister," Teagan said, taking a timid step closer to Jack. "Looks to me like he's tellin' the truth."
"What if he is?" Evelyn demanded. "This is still ridiculous. We can't affor' to add a newbie who doe'n't know a splicer from a zombie to the group. He makes one false step down here, he gets himself killed, and takes all of us down with him. If he hasn't already killed us all by leading a bunch of bloody splicers here."
"I'm not an idiot," Langford said. "I made sure we weren't followed."
"We're all breathing borrowed air anyway," said the weasel-faced man with the wide-brimmed fedora. "There's nothin' this kid could do that could make us any worse off than we's already is." He tossed a pair of dice into the air and caught them in one hand.
"Easy for you to say, Lucky," said the Hispanic man. "But if I recall right, those big boasts of yours never really paid off at the tables at Sir Prize's Games of Chance."
"Shut up, Pancho." This caused a snicker from the other tall man. "You, too, Giuseppe."
"Quiet, all of yous!" The man in orange leather overalls raised a hand in the air, speaking with a voice as cracked and weathered as his skin. "Ol' Peachy hears somethin'."
"What is it this time, Wilkins?" Evelyn asked.
Peach Wilkins just shushed her and moved toward a door on the side of the theater. Everyone held their breath, and as Peach fidgeted with the lock over the door, the sound of a child's voice reached Jack's ears.
"There is a land called Lillipoppi, and living there is the LILLIPOP!"
Peach hunched down and crept out of the theater, into the darkness.
"I'll go there soon with MR. BUBBLES and we'll search the place from . . ."
Then choking.
Peach stepped back into the room, gripping a little girl, probably around nine years old, by the neck. She was malnourished, wearing a muddy pink dress, and covered in barnacles, with just wide white discs where eyes should be, and Jack realized he had seen her before.
"Hit the jackpot, Ol' Peachy has!"
The little girl was struggling violently, trying to get free, and Peach was holding on to her like she was a stubborn fish he had just pulled off the line that was trying to flop its way back into the water.
"What are you going to do to her?" Jack asked.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do to her," Peach said. "I'm going to break her little neck, then I'm going to reach down her throat and scoop out all the yummy ADAM I can eat."
"Wait! That's wrong," Jack said. "She's only a little girl."
"You just say that because you want all of the ADAM fer yerself," Peach said. "Well, Ol' Peachy found her and she's Ol' Peachy's now."
Jack reached over and yanked the pistol from Evelyn's trousers, turning it quickly at Peach. Everyone stepped back.
"Put her down! Now!" Jack ordered.
Peach responded by drawing a pistol of his own and aiming it right back at Jack.
"Go ahead. You want her, you'll have to pry her out of my dead hands."
Jack remembered the car dealership, when an even smaller girl had cried and he would have liked nothing better than to snap her neck. That seemed like years ago now.
"I'm not fooling around, Wilkins. Let the little girl go."
"No! You're new here. You don't understand," Evelyn said. "You think that's just an ordinary child? She's a Li'l Sister now!"
"LET HER GO!" Jack repeated.
"NEVER!" Peach yelled.
"Quiet, both of you!" Giuseppe yelled.
And in the small moment of quiet that followed, a heavy footstep echoed through the theater.
"We're too late," Evelyn said, her voice coming out as dry and cracked as Peach's.
Another footstep sounded, heavy and metallic.
The Little Sister in Peach's grip stopped struggling and smiled. She began to sing.
"Mr. Bubbles, Mr. Bubbles . . ."
A low moan, like a whale call, accompanied the footsteps now.
"Are you there? Are you there?"
The moaning and the footsteps were less distant now, causing vibrations throughout the auditorium that sent tiny pieces of rubble skittering across the floor.
"Come and bring me lollies. Come and give me toffees. Teddy bears. Teddy bears."
A/N – Before anyone asks, Evelyn, or any other OC, for that matter, is not replacing Atlas. He'll be making his "appearance" a little later.
And remember, A Man Reads and Reviews; A Parasite Visits Without Offering any Constructive Criticism.