Disclaimer - I own no rights to the Bioshock universe.
As the Little Sister finished singing the words "Teddy bears", a behemoth dived from one of the balconies. It landed without stumbling, without its knees buckling, staring straight at Peach and the little girl, who was now smiling and laughing.
"I knew you'd come, Daddy."
The behemoth was at least ten feet tall, encased in an oversized diving suit. The giant bubble of a helmet was covered in eight small portholes, lit up by red light bulbs, making it impossible to see a face beneath the glass. Its feet were like two large cinder blocks. Its left fist was easily the size of a regular man's head, and in place of a right hand, the other arm gave way to an industrial drill. The figure gave the eerie impression of being, overall, not a figure in a diving suit, but the diving suit itself as a living entity.
"What the hell is that?" Jack asked.
"That," Twitch replied, "is a big Daddy."
Pancho fired the Thompson machine gun at the diving suit, stepping backwards as he did so. The others were running for the exit, except for Peach, who had released his grip on the girl and was now just trembling before the behemoth.
The bullets bounced off the Big Daddy, who continued moving closer to Peach without flinching. Jack stood still, transfixed, unable to look away.
"Ol' Peachy didn't mean anything by it," Wilkins stammered. "I'm letting her go. She's fine. See? She's fine."
"I don't like him," the Little Sister said. "Unzip him, Mr. B! Unzip him!"
The drill hummed as it began spinning on the end of the Big Daddy's arm. Peach let out a horrified scream as the tip penetrated the center of his chest, and then the end emerged out Wilkins' back.
The Big Daddy pulled its arm back, and the blade stopped spinning after the drill was separated from Wilkins' torso. Peach stood for a moment, unable to do anything but gasp, a hole the size of a basketball in his chest, mangled cloth and little bits of what was left of his ribs visible around the edges. His arms were covered in his own blood, and he was gripping his intestines in his hands. Finally, what was left of him hit the floor.
Then the Big Daddy turned its entire body towards Jack.
"Jack, get outta there!" the sweet Irish voice called.
But Jack couldn't move. He couldn't feel his legs anymore.
The drill swung through the air and struck Jack on the side of the head, sending him backwards to the floor. The Big Daddy took one step forward.
Then the diving suit burst into flames. The Big Daddy stumbled back, writhing and groaning in agony.
Jack looked over his shoulder and saw Teagan. She appeared to be holding a torch in her left hand, until she came closer and Jack realized the hand itself was on fire. As she ran to him, the fire seemed to disappear into her arm until it was extinguished completely.
Teagan grabbed Jack's arm and tugged him to his feet.
"C'mon, Jack! Let's go!"
The Big Daddy's flailing drill grazed Teagan's side. Jack shook himself and ran with her, the two pulling each other toward the door.
The others were already outside the theater. The Big Daddy was putting out the flames with its leather-gloved hand. Then it was charging forward, shoulder first, as smoothly as if it were on ice skates.
"Mr. Touch!" Evelyn called to the tall, thin man in the torn suit. "I think we need your touch."
The man held out both arms, fingers spread out and curled, and then jerked back his wrists. Pieces of rubble lifted off the ground. As Mr. Touch waved his hands as if he was conducting a symphony, the pieces of stone and iron flew to the doorway, blocking the Big Daddy's path. Mr. Touch jerked back his wrists again, and more stones flew from all around the hallway, assembling a wall in front of the lumbering diving suit. The ominous thumping of the creature's fist and drill pounding on the other side of the pile of rubble echoed through the hallway.
Evelyn sighed and then clenched her hands into fists. Ice crystals formed and crawled up her forearm to her knuckles, and then icicles emerged all over her hand. As she opened her fingers, a gust of cold wind blew past Jack, and a layer of ice began to form between the rocks and over the surface of the makeshift wall. Evelyn slowly waved her hand back and forth, lower and lower, directing the cold blast until the wall was covered with a thick sheet of ice.
"A camera!" Giuseppe said. He pointed away from the wall, to a spot by the ceiling where a camera was slowly rotating back and forth, a red light bulb flashing above it. "We need to do something before someone spots the new guy with us."
"Twitch!" Evelyn turned to the boy. "Do your thing."
Twitch smiled and zigzagged over to the corner by the camera. He opened a pouch around his waist and lifted out a small tool kit.
"Twitch is our . . . what does he call it?"
"Skilled hacker," Twitch called. He grabbed a screwdriver and shimmied up the wall like a lizard. The boy was smiling a toothy grin now, gleefully toying with some screws and wires in a hatch on the side of the camera. When the red light bulb blinked out and a green one lit up in its place, Twitch closed the hatch and screwed it tightly shut again.
"We need to keep moving," Evelyn said. She began marching down the hallway, the others following her. "That barrier won't hold that Daddy long."
"Wait a minute," Jack said, running through the crowd, trying to keep stride with Evelyn. "I need some explanations. What's going on here? What was that thing? And how were you able to shoot ice out of your hand?"
"He needs to know something," Dr. Langford said, moving closer to Jack. "Mister . . . ?"
"Wynand," Jack offered.
"Mister Wynand," Langford continued. "Do you know what a plasmid is?"
"No."
"You really don't know anything." She let out an exasperated sigh. "A plasmid is a unit of DNA, one that is separated from, and able to replicate independently of, chromosomal DNA. They're essential to the idea of genetic engineering."
Jack nodded in understanding.
"Scientists down here were able to find a way to synthesize plasmids that could be inserted into an individual's DNA. They found a way to allow each individual to personalize his or her own DNA, to devise a better genetic code than the one nature had given them."
"Is that even possible?"
"It wouldn't be. Without ADAM. Scientists discovered the basic components in the belly of a certain sea slug. After a little work in their labs, they were able to devise a drug that could be used to make the genetic structure more malleable. The further scientists developed it, the more unbelievable the plasmids became. Man could lift immovable objects just by pointing, lower objects to sub-zero temperatures with the wave of a hand, start a fire by rubbing two fingers together. But it came at a cost."
"And what was that?"
"It was addictive," Langford continued. "More addictive than any other drug known to man. Both the body and mind became dependent on it."
Jack instinctively rubbed his needle-pricked arm.
"Like we said, those weren't 'zombies' you met," Evelyn said. "They're splicers. ADAM addicts that injected a few plasmids too many. Being deprived of their usual fix warped not only their minds but their bodies. They still hang on t' some o' their human thoughts and feelings, but they need whatever bits of ADAM they can scrape to be even barely lucid."
"Then how come you guys aren't all howling at the moon?"
""Cause we barely touched the stuff," Teagan explained.
"Speak fer yerself," Lucky said, taking off his fedora and wiping the sweat off his brow. "I ain't never touched the stuff."
"We dabbled in splicing, sure," Teagan said. "But we're no splicers. The splicers spliced and spliced until their DNA barely resembled what it was before ADAM. "
"Look," Twitch said. "All you need to know is Splicers want ADAM, Little Sisters harvest the ADAM from the blood of dead Splicers, and Big Daddies protect the Little Sisters."
"We're wasting our breath explaining all this to him," Evelyn said. "We can't keep pullin' 'im out o' harm's way every time he finds somet'in' he don't understand." She turned to Jack. "Hand me back the pistol you took from me, would you?"
Jack placed the gun back in Evelyn's outstretched palm. She snapped back the hammer and pressed the barrel against Jack's forehead.
"What are you doing?" Langford demanded.
"The decent human thing," Evelyn said. "Putting him out of his misery. Better us than anything else that's out there. He nearly got us all killed by that Big Daddy in the theater. If we keep him along with us, he'll only slow us all down. We'll be lucky if it's only 'imself 'e gets killed."
"We had to leave the theater sooner or later," Langford insisted. She pulled a map from her pocket and traced a path across it with her finger. "Now's as good a time as any to head for the Medical Pavillion. We'll need the supplies there."
"You're crazy, Doc," Lucky said. "As if the splicers between here and there ain't bad enough, Medical Pavillion's Steinman's territory."
"It's not worth the risk," Evelyn agreed. "We'd be better off heading for Fort Frolic. There's food there. And drink. And probably shelter from the splicers. It would be more worthwhile than going out o' our way for some gauze tape and boxes of bandages. Those who can't grin and bear their own wounds are just going to get themselves killed, anyway."
"And are you going to be putting your own sister out of her misery, as well?"
Evelyn followed Langford's gaze to Teagan, who was poking at the exposed flesh where her blouse had been torn at the waist by the Big Daddy's drill. The patch of skin was burnt and bleeding.
"Just a flesh wound," Teagan said, trying to manage a smile.
Evelyn frowned and lowered her pistol.
"We can't all go into the Pavillion," she said. "Too big o' a target."
"Then we just send one guy," Lucky said. "Someone expendable."
He looked at Jack.
"Yeah," Giuseppe agreed. "If you're so sure he's going to get himself killed, he might as well die trying to do something useful. If he makes it out alive, maybe he's worth keepin' around after all."
Evelyn stopped marching and looked at the faces in the group for confirmation.
"I'll go with him," Teagan offered.
"You're in no condition to go anywhere," Evelyn insisted.
"I say you send the new guy," Pancho said. "Give him a chance to prove he's worth his salt before you leave him to the dogs."
The others nodded.
"Very well," Evelyn said, slapping Jack across the back. "Looks like you just netted yourself an audition."
A/N - To be continued . . .