Disclaimer - I own no legal rights to the BioShock universe or any related characters.
CaliforniaStop – Thank you for your compliment. I realize this isn't the perfect representation of a BioShock movie, even the one I intended it to be. I just knew what worked for the game, someone exploring the dark, shadowy corridors of Rapture alone, only worked because people who were probably playing alone were able to feel like they were experiencing the dark, shadowy corridors of Rapture under the guise of Jack. I thought for a movie there'd need to be more drama, and, as much as I wanted to give the baddies bigger roles, I couldn't see them leaving their individual territories. So I filled in the gaps with some staples of the zombie genre, thus the rag-tag band of survivors Jack interacts with. Didn't work as well as I hoped (I didn't want to diminish Atlas' role as much as I have), but if you don't like them, at least you notice they're quickly dwindling in numbers.
TheBleachDoctor, Zero612, InsaneJelly, and my Anon reviewer – Seriously, thank you guys for your reviews. Along with CaliforniaStop, you finally gave me the motivation I needed to write another chapter. Sorry it's only a short one.
A/N – Here we are. Unlucky Chapter 13. If you'll remember long ago when I wrote Chapter 12, I was planning on calling this chapter "Death in Arcadia." I found a better title in a nifty article I found online, a designer commentary by J.P. LeBreton, one of the designers for BioShock's Arcadia, that fit the idea of this chapter a little more poetically. That article provided some much needed inspiration for this chapter.
Bill McDonagh sat at a table across from the bar at The Fighting McDonagh, letting one of his hired hands fix drinks for the other patrons as he sipped his own mix of whiskey and soda, heavier on the whiskey side. He was playing his last meeting with Andrew Ryan and Security Chief Sullivan over and over in his head, hoping the whiskey would take away the sick feeling in his stomach it created.
The chair next to him screeched back from the table. He tried not to appear too startled as he turned to the person who had snuck up beside him, but he had to recoil when he saw the mess of bandages covering her face.
"Hello, Bill."
McDonagh took another sip of his whiskey.
"Ms. McClintock." He tried to spit out the words. "I'm sorry. I tried to help you, but . . ."
"You can help me now, Bill," she said, taking her seat and sipping her martini through what were still shapely lips.
"I heard Steinman was working on you, as a personal favor to Mr. Ryan. I never much cared for the bloke m'self, but he's. . ."
"I should be able to take the bandages off in a few days, but I'm afraid to look in the mirror. J. S. has been getting a little too . . . experimental with his work for my tastes."
They sat and sipped their drinks in silence for a chilly moment, McDonagh knowing what McClintock wanted to talk about, but afraid to breech the subject, McClintock seeming to feed off of McDonagh's discomfort.
Finally, McDonagh gathered the courage. He coughed and then spoke.
"I hear you're with Him now."
"What of it?" Diane said, her shapely lips smiling between the bandages. "Are you going to report me to Sullivan's security team?"
"Now, now. I don't think that will be necessary. I just don't want any trouble in my bar."
"He wants your help, Bill. There's no one in Rapture that Ryan trusts more. You can get close, and then . . ."
"You shouldn't talk about it so loudly. If someone hears you even talking about that, we could both be . . ."
"Look at me, Bill." Diane grabbed McDonagh's face and forced him to look into the one bloodshot eye still visible. "What can anyone take away from me that hasn't been taken already?"
McDonagh jerked his head away and took a bigger swallow from his glass.
"Please, Diane. Just leave me alone. Go back to Him. Tell Him I'm the bloody enemy if you want. But I won't do it. I won't betray Mr. Ryan."
"I cared for him, too, Bill. Once. I know what it feels like to want to please him. But look around you. Is this the Rapture dream he's always talking about? Do you think this is what he had in mind when he had this place built?" McDonagh heard her chair scraping the floor again as she stood up. "You'd be doing Andrew a favor."
When McDonagh turned his head again, Diane McClintock had vanished. He finished his drink. The sickness in his stomach had only become worse.
He lifted his glass and threw it with all his strength, shattering it across the floor.
"Where are you going?" Evelyn demanded. "Fort Frolic is this way."
She jerked her head to indicate the desired path, but Julie Langford continued to step defiantly in the opposite direction.
"But the research labs are this way."
"You're seriously goin' to get yourself killed o'er a few pieces o' papers and some microscope slides?"
"Those papers and slides you refer to," said Langford, sticking the soft 'V' of her feminine chin out haughtily, "happen to represent the most successful period of my career as a scientist. Even if I could ever hope to recreate what I accomplished in the facilities down here, it could take years back on the surface."
"And that's worth bein' torn apart by a bunch o' spliced up nutjobs?"
"I have a responsibility to the scientific community back on the surface to share the discoveries I made down here with them. That aside, selfishly, my recent discoveries in the field of botany down here are worth a fortune."
"Fine." Evelyn turned her back dismissively. "Go get yerself killed o'er your fancy science. It'll save us the trouble o' having to watch splicers play with your insides."
Julie Langford said nothing, but just continued to walk in the direction she was facing.
Jack ran after her.
"I think you're going to need some back-up, Professor."
"Why, Mr. Wynand," Julie replied, smiling at Jack with something that resembled warmth.
"You know me. I've just been Mr. Chivalry lately."
Teagan looked imploringly at her sister. Evelyn rolled her eyes.
"Ah, hell."
The sign said "Rapture Research Laboratories – Arcadia Facility." The picture above the caption was an illustration of three trees silhouetted in a sunset.
"I told you this wouldn't take long," Langford said, pushing through the front door of the facility. "Just wait here. I'll grab my papers and be right out."
The door shut behind her. Evelyn paced around nervously, peering up at the treetops all around them.
"I still don't like this."
Mr. Touch flinched as something rustled in the tree above him, throwing leaves down on his shoulder. He backed away slowly.
Another treetop rustled above Evelyn. She cocked her shotgun.
"Ah, hell," she repeated.
"What is it?" Jack asked.
In response, a crazed voice from above said, "Who dares to disturb our domain?"
All guns pointed to the treetops.
"Hey, Doc," Twitch yelled, banging on the glass front of the laboratory. "I think you're gonna need to hurry it up in there."
Strange whoops and howls fell from the treetops.
"Get ready to meet the Saturnine," Evelyn said.
With a bloodcurdling battle cry, a spider splicer, dressed in a scant outfit made from leaves and twigs, leapt from a tree and slashed at Evelyn with one of the sickles he had strapped to his body to use for climbing. She managed to step out of the way just in time to take the cut on her shoulder.
The whoops and hollers were echoing from every corner of the garden now. Splicers climbed down from trees and out of bushes, with several scrambling across the glass dome above the plants.
Something seemed to catch Twitch's eye. Looking more antsy than usual, he darted off into the lab.
"Where you goin', boyo?" Evelyn shouted.
She was busy using the shotgun as a means of parrying the slashes of another splicer's sickles.
Mr. Touch flexed his fingers, and one of the trees bent in his direction. When the top branches draped the ground, Touch relaxed his fingers. The tree launched the splicers hiding in it like pebbles from a slingshot. The flying splicers managed to knock several other spiders off the roof, who in turn crashed down on the Saturnine members below them.
Meanwhile, Twitch had reappeared, pushing a cart beneath a large object draped in a dirty sheet.
Twitch tossed the sheet off, revealing some kind of automated weapon mounted to a tripod, not that different from the turrets they'd encountered in the smuggler's cove in Port Neptue.
"Looks like a prototype for some sort of new security device," Twitch said, reaching for his toolkit. "If I can just play around with it a bit . . . "
Jack looked around for a place to hide while he reloaded his gun, but there still seemed to be a splicer behind every plant and tree. Fortunately, they didn't seem to be carrying any weapons beyond their hooks or sickles and the occasional misappropriated tree branch.
One of the hooks sailed through the air and thudded into a tree just beside Jack's neck. He quickly reloaded the revolver and fired at the nearest splicer.
Twitch had been playing with a panel on the security prototype he'd found in the lab. Now, he inserted his screwdriver. There was a loud boom and a cloud of smoke.
Jack ran to help, but a spider splicer dropped from the ceiling and blocked his path. Jack swung at the splicer's head as hard as he could with his pistol and then, when the splicer collapsed at his feet, fired a shot into the splicer's head.
He looked to the spot where the young hacker had been tinkering with his new toy. The cloud had dissipated, leaving behind a melted hunk of debris and no sign of Twitch.
"Didn't think I'd ever hear myself say this," Evelyn said, shouting to be heard over gunfire, "but I think I miss Pancho right around now."
Mr. Touch was flexing his fingers to bend another tree when a splicer leaped from the treetop towards him. Touch dodged back, deftly avoiding each swing of the monster's sickle.
More splicers kept coming out of the foliage.
"We've gotta get out o' here," Evelyn said. "Tell that professor o' yours if she doe'n't get out o' there now we're goin' t' leave her behind."
Jack nodded and ran into the research lab.
"Professor Langford, we have to go now!"
He found Langford's office. He could see her through the clear glass wall, but the door wouldn't open for him. Langford was studying a file she had pulled out of a cabinet intently as Jack frantically pounded on the glass.
Langford turned to him and opened her mouth to speak.
Seeming to appear at random from the shadows in the office, a blade slid across her throat and blood began to pour down her neck. When she collapsed, Jack couldn't make out the assailant in the dark.
Professor Langford's hand slammed against the window, her fingertips covered in blood. Jack watched as the fingertip skated across the glass forming letters.
"Would you k—"
Then he saw the hand go limp and fall.
Jack turned to run. The splicers were entering the lab. He braced himself and elbowed through until he was out of the lab and back in the gardens of Arcadia.
Two of the splicers surrounding Jack collapsed, and he saw Teagan aiming her revolver. She was standing next to an open vent leading into the lab.
"Professor Langford . . ." Jack said. "She's . . . They got her."
"Then I guess this little side trip turned out t' be pointless after all," Evelyn said. "Let's get out o' here."
Mr. Touch and Evelyn ran, Teagan following behind. But as Jack started to run after them, his foot caught a tree root and he fell.
A small group of splicers was now approaching him, and these ones had guns.
"Jack!" someone cried.
Jack saw Teagan running to help him. He put out a hand to signal for her to stop, but she surged forward and grabbed his hand. The armed splicers formed a circle around them, and one held a Tommy gun to Teagan's back.
A short, bald man with a sweaty mustache pushed his way through the splicers.
"You're both under arrest," he wheezed. "Are you gonna come quietly, or do we got to do this the hard way?"
Teagan struggled, and one of the splicers cracked her over the head with his gun. Jack dropped his revolver and slowly raised his hands above his head.
A/N – To be continued . . .