I suppose at the beginning of each chapter I'll have a little flashback. They'll be going in general chronological order, but it would be smart to check my ANs for clarification if something doesn't make sense, because I'll probably skip around. I am. The queen. Of plot holes. So if the one person reading this (ahem SepiaDreams is awesome ahem) finds anything, just PM me and I'll elaborate.
W'P
-o-
13 October, 1958.
"A-a-a-at la-a-a-st…" Katherine sang into the microphone, looking around the room. She was really just background music, but a couple people with nothing better to do watched her perform. It was the last song of her set, and her favorite to sing. Not because of the lyrics, but because it was easy and smooth. "My lo-o-ove has come alo-o-ong…My lonely days, are over-r-r..."
The appearance of the Big Daddy and Little Sister a couple weeks ago, however brief, had given everyone something to talk about. Seeing the odd pair in public was somewhat unusual, especially since they had made a shortcut through a party.
"And life is li-i-ike a so-ong!"
Susanne was flirting with a couple blokes in a corner. She had always been very good at that. It was something Katherine couldn't even really fathom. Susanne had probably discovered some obscure aphrodisiac that she kept hidden in her brassiere or something like that. She was a magnet, and could pull off every trick in the book. Innocent, flirty, naughty, hard to get, intelligent. You name it, Susy could get a guy with it. One look at a man and she knew exactly how to seduce him. She was like…like the Sherlock Holmes of sex. It was actually somewhat remarkable.
"The ski-i-ies above are blu-ue…My heart, was wrapped up, in clover-r-r-rs…The night I-I-I looked at you-u-u…" Katherine took a breath as the band played for a moment. "I found a dream that I can speak to…A dream that I-I-I-I can call my own. I found a thri-i-i-il to press my cheek to…A thrill that I-I-I have never known…"
Katherine glanced up at the clock on the wall as, after another chorus, her song ended. Her set was, thankfully, now over, as well as the pianist's. Their sets overlapped but ended at the same time. She smiled at the polite applause and accepted a flower one of the men who had actually been listening gave her.
Backstage, there were costumes, mirrors, make-up and props galore. There wasn't as much stuff here as in, say, Fleet Hall, but it was still substantial. Katherine sidled through the people there, edging away to her dressing room.
It was just a tiny little room, and since she wasn't a performing girl, there was little in there. Hanging on a rack were her few nice dresses, all but one of them some shade of green. Sander Cohen, the man with the final say on everything arts, had insisted because of her hair that 99% of her wardrobe be green, including make-up, and that was that. The man had so much on his plate; he couldn't spare her a second glance.
But she did manage to get an autograph, which she had added to her collection. Being in Rapture had given her a unique opportunity to get a few celebrity autographs, all of which she was very proud of, and had tucked into the frame of her mirror. So far, she had Jasmine Jolene, Sander Cohen, a difficultly obtained Brigit Tenenbaum, and finally one from Andrew Ryan himself. Next to them were pictures of her family—a muscly man, a woman with a grin too large for her face with a babe in her arms, two girls and one boy standing at the bottom—Susanne, a few friends from secondary school, and more recently, of the city from any of the glass halls that connected buildings. One was of a giant squid that had swum past her flat, which had made her yell in shock. She had thought it was a sea monster.
Katherine put the flower on top of a pile of drying ones on her dresser, picked up a wet cloth and began wiping away her make-up, leaving dark green smears on the white fabric. If she wanted to go out and socialise some more, she would leave it on, but all she really wanted to do was go back to her flat, have a quick cuppa and go to bed.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in." Katherine said, a little tiredly.
In the mirror, the pianist entered. "Good job out there today." He said.
"Thanks, um…"
"Kyle Fitzpatrick."
"Right, right. Thanks, Kyle. Was there something you needed? Afraid I'm about to head home rather soon."
"Yeah, um…would you want to get a drink some time? Or, dancing, maybe?"
Katherine's eyebrows rose. "I…sure, why not. Meet me in the atrium outside Fleet Hall tomorrow at eight."
"Really?" He looked even more surprised than her. "I mean, great. See you there." He stepped out, closing the door behind him. Outside could be heard a quiet, "Yes!" And then retreating footsteps.
Katherine continued rubbing away her make-up. "Well," She said to herself. "That was unusual."
-o-
"Here it is, Jumper Jack." Kiki gestured grandly at the entrance to her "house", a curtain of water. "Home, sweet home."
They stopped at the entrance to a little grotto, about a dozen metres long and half that wide. It was filled with water but for some stepping stones that Kiki had placed to get across. At the other end was a little bed, a locked safe and a couple crates on rocks to stay above the water. Little, trickling streams dribbled into the main pool on either end. The stone walls emitted a sort of bluish glow, and in the prime of Arcadia it was one of the most romantic settings next to the Tea Garden. Kiki hopped over the stones, bare feet slipping. In other parts of Rapture, shoes were needed, but not in Arcadia. Easier that way, anyway.
"It's really very cosy once you get used to it. So," She pointed to the crates in order. "First aid, EVE, food, clothes, and ADAM. Keep in mind if you try to use any of this stuff without my permission and you aren't dying, starving or otherwise, I'll suffocate you in your own jumper. This is two years of work."
"Impressive." Jack complimented, carefully maneuvering from stone to stone. Kiki jumped up into her hammock, taking a key from her shirt and swinging back to unlock the first aid crate. She tossed aside the empty one she'd used on Jack and grabbed a fresh one.
"It is, isn't it?" She said, observing her swollen finger. Damn Rosa Galica had pricked her. Genetically enhanced plants had some odd side effects. Her finger had grown bright red, her veins blue, and her entire hand bruised yellow and purple. "Gross…" She uncapped the ADAM needle with her teeth and poked it into her wrist. "That should help."
"So!" Now feeling better, Kiki rocked back and forth like the hammock was a swing. "Anything you need? Hungry?"
"Yeah, actually." Jack said, jumping to the piece of land next to her. "What is this place?"
"Adopted home." Kiki unlocked the food crate with a different key, putting the first aid one back in her bra. "Had a problem with Houdinis popping in here while I slept, but they've mostly cleared out by now."
"Eat these." Kiki threw a bag of crisps to Jack and leaned back to grab some more food. "Around here, you don't know when your next meal will be." She looked up, and saw him finishing off the bag. She blinked. He blinked back.
"…"
"…" Jack lifted the bag up to tip the crumbs back into his mouth.
Kiki laughed and threw a couple more bags over, along with a crème cake. "Well, someone's hungry. That's fine, I'm kinda hungry too. But after this, it's right back to Julie."
She changed her plasmid to Incinerate and held the fire up to the bottom of a thermos of cold coffee to warm it a little. She opened it and drank half in one breath before passing it over to Jack, who was already done with all his food. He finished it off and handed it back to Kiki, who washed it out with water and filled it with the same before putting it back in the crate.
"So, how long have you been here?" Kiki asked, eating a crème cake in two bites.
Jack shrugged. "Two weeks?"
"I know how that is. You lose track of time in here. Well, at least you'll be around for the second anniversary. Pity you didn't get to see Rapture in its prime. Quite the sight to see." Her eyes glazed over a moment, thinking of different times. She quite quickly snapped back into it with a shrug and a noise of apathy. "Things change, I suppose. Best be moving on now, see how Julie is doing."
They finished eating in silence and left the hidden cave. Kiki swept a curtain of that irritatingly contagious vine over the small entrance, making sure it was concealed before they started walking back to the laboratory. Many of the Splicers had cleared out, now. That had been partially luck, partially some timing on Kiki's part. She'd gotten used to the Splicers' "shifts" and knew when there would be a higher concentration than other times.
She knocked on the sealed door to the lab once they were back, and after a pause, Julie popped up on the screen. "Oh, Kathy. It's good you're back, I'm almost done with the factor. Here, I'll let you in."
The door clanked as it was unlocked, and slid up to let the two in. Weapons still bared, they walked inside to find the turrets, security cameras, and security bots all allies and not caring about their presence. It wouldn't last long, though, so they hurried through the destroyed offices, Kiki leading, to Langford's office.
The botanist had more or less sealed herself away. Only Kiki had seen her in person in the last two years, and even then it was only once every few months. They could both entertain or otherwise keep themselves busy in the gardens without disturbing each other. However, it was mostly Kiki who couldn't bother Langford, the latter being of a higher position of power before the fall of the city, and those boundaries still being respected. To a degree.
They entered a small hall, where a window with green words inscribed read "Dr Julie Langford, Botanist" looked in on a dark-haired woman at a lab table. Beakers and graduated cylinders of different-coloured chemicals released little bits of smoke into the room, as Julie seemed to be measuring something out in a vial.
Kiki knocked on the glass. Julie saw, waved, and held up a finger. "One minute." She said to them.
"Julie…" Andrew Ryan's voice sang over the intercom, for all three to hear. Julie flinched and looked around. "We made a business deal, did we not? Money changed hands—let me read to you from the agreement. Section three, sub-section four…"
"Mr Ryan!" Julie tried to protest.
"'Ryan Industries maintains exclusive rights to the creation, use, and exploitation of the Lazarus Vector.'" As he spoke, clouds of green gas burst into the lab, swirling around a trapped Julie.
"No—wait—please!" She cried, clutching at her throat.
Kiki dashed to the door, trying the knob and pulling, pushing and otherwise shoving in vain. It was locked tight, probably by Ryan. Jack started cracking the end of his gun against the glass, which was too strong to break. The window fogged over with thick slime from the fumes. All the while, they listened to Julie's pleading screams of pain as she suffocated and coughed, her footsteps as she stumbled around in her office, and a heavy thump as she apparently hit the ground.
Then, just when it seemed over, there was a weak cough and a squeaking as Julie began to write in the window slime. Her finger carved a fast, desperate message into the goo, her coughing and death rattles still audible. A hand print appeared, and as she wrote the last figure, two thick bands of the window were wiped clean by her hands as she collapsed. At last, the message read, backwards: 9457.
Kiki collapsed into the toxic room as Ryan, the sick fuck he was, opened the door.
She immediately stumbled back out, waving away the green poisons as they dissipated into the fresh air outside. Once the lab was more or less cleared out, she and Jack stormed inside. Julie was sprawled in a corner, her eyes and mouth open in terror, face a sickly colour. Kiki kneeled beside her and closed her eyes, taking a moment of silence for a good acquaintance.
She looked up at the numbers scrawled on the window. 9457. Probably the combination or password to something, but what…
"Hey." Jack speaking caught her attention, and Kiki turned to see him jerk a thumb at a safe near the back of the room, in a wall.
"Good catch." Kiki sighed, walking over to the safe and entering the number. The safe popped open, revealing the contents: a good stack of cash, a couple boxes of ammo for a pistol, and an audio recording on a tape.
Kiki took out all of it, tucking the money into her pocket, putting the pistol ammunition at her belt, and pressing play on the tape.
"What's the point of being a damn genius if the only ones around to appreciate it are a bunch of spliced-up morons?" Langford snarled from the tape. "I've cracked the Lazarus Vector. Or at least, I'm 99% certain I have. I just need a bud of Rosa Galica to confirm my analysis. Distilled water, a bit of chlorophyll, and enzymes extracted from Apis Mallifera. That's right, sweethearts—honeybee spit."
The tape spluttered to an end. Kiki smirked and set it on the desk. "Well, that's easy."
"Hm?"
"I have everything but the enzymes back at the hideout. And, I know exactly where to find that honeybee spit."
-o-
"Just pull that lever."
"Sure?"
"Yes of course I'm sure, now pull that little lever right there. Right now. Go on."
"…"
"Don't give me that look, I'm perfectly confident in this. Charging into a giant room of bees completely unprotected, that's just a walk 'round the block here. Not even that! It's, it's…it's eating a nice breakfast on a patio while you watch the sun come up, that's what it is. Your entire job, Jumper Jack, is to kill the Splicers coming through that there door. I have about sixty seconds or less, so just please keep them off so I don't get stung too much. Got it?"
"…You're sure about this?"
"For god's sake, man!"
"I could do it."
"Pull the bloody lever!"
"Fine, fine!" Jack yanked the lever down, releasing the smoke from the ceiling. The swarms of buzzing bees in the room quieted as the insects fell from the air. Kiki ran in, swatting some stragglers away. She ran up to the nearest stack of bee houses and searched through, scraping a test tube around to gather up some of the spit solution.
She did this for the next few seconds, running and throwing open drawers as fast as possible. She got stung a couple times, but it wasn't life-threatening. After a few moments, she heard a few gunshots, and looked up to see Jack casually shooting a few curious Splicers. Catching her eye, he tapped his wrist and made a "get back here" motion.
Nodding, Kiki booked it back to safety just as the bees stirred around and woke back up. Soon, the room was buzzing again.
"That was…less fun than I had hoped." Kiki decided, observing her small half-tube of enzymes, and plucking a few remaining stingers from her skin. "And yes," She added, seeing Jack's roll of the eyes. "I expected it to be fun." She tapped the glass tube with her nail. "I need a bit more, I should think. Once more into the fray."
"The lever, if you would, Jumper." Kiki bounced on her heels, now knowing she should run faster and get stung less.
"I have a name."
"Yes, I use it often. Now, the lever."
Jack gave her a look and pulled the switch. Kiki ran in again, once more disregarding the bees pricking her skin as she collected the enzymes. The gunfire came sooner this time, and there was more. Glancing up, she saw Jack dual-wielding Incinerate and a machine gun, actually doing pretty well about it. Kiki hurriedly filled up the test tube and ran back to the control area as the bees woke.
There was one Splicer doing better than the others at dodging the majority of Jack's attacks, laughing stupidly and jumping around unpredictably. Bullets rattled around the small room and pieces of brick lit on fire. Unfortunately, he jumped around right in front of Kiki, who, without missing a beat, grabbed the back of his shirt, shoved him into the room of bees and blew him a sarcastic kiss. The genetically enhanced insects went at the Splicer instantly, stinging him mercilessly until he was quite obviously dead.
"All done." Kiki put a stopper in the tube. "That's a lot of spit. Better to have more than less, I suppose. Not anxious to go back in there any time soon." She started walking, not seeing that Jack looked like he wanted to say something. "Back to the lab, cook up this Lizard Factor or whatever it is, fix the trees and Bob's your uncle."
"Ow!" Kiki touched her middle and blinked in surprise when her hand came back bloody. "What the…"
"My fault." Jack said apologetically. In the fray with that dodging Splicer who'd jumped in front of Kiki, he accidentally shot her.
"At this rate, I'll be one of them in no time." Kiki grumbled, trying to slowly sit down but just kind of flopping onto her bum. She took the first aid from her belt and did the ADAM first, injecting it and tossing the empty hypo away. She took out the alcohol, bandages, and cotton.
"Do you mind?" She gritted out to Jack, who started, flushed a little and turned around. Kiki lifted her shirt up and cleaned and bound the wound. "Okay, you're fine." She grimaced, standing. Her hand was still tightly grasping the tube of enzymes, her other pressing her gunshot wound.
"Sorry."
"Don't be. Shit happens. Now, let's go repair the trees before we all die of oxygen withdrawal."
The beekeeping room was in the Farmer's Market, in a different district than Arcadia, so the walk back was a bit longer. "Never cared so much for the Market." Kiki talked to fill the silence. "So many people, buying and carrying food around. Pain in the ass, but fun every now and then on a Sunday afternoon."
Back in Arcadia, the ground was now littered with dead leaves and flower petals, ripped pieces of bark like dead skin in the autumn. There weren't many Splicers, but they could be heard a few rooms away, screaming nonsense to themselves. Getting through Julie's labs was more of a chore, as the security had all perked right back up again and there was now more sneaking around involved.
Eventually they got back to Julie's office. Her body was still slumped over in the same place, and the room still reeked of the toxins that had killed her. Kiki walked to the lab table and, using what little knowledge she had garnered from Julie, patched together a Lazarus Vector that would have to do.
"Good enough." Kiki sighed, looking at the solution slosh around. "I'm no botanical genius, though. It could kill us all."
She put it into the distribution chamber and waited, hoping that she hadn't completely fucked up. Atlas chose the time to chime in. "Ha! Listen to the damn thing gurgle and crack. How long's it gonna take?"
"It seems Julie's death didn't provide a clear enough lesson for you." Andrew Ryan spoke coolly form the radio. "Perhaps this will suffice." He went out with a buzzing of static.
"Ryan's got your number. No doubt he'll be sending company." Atlas came back, tone serious. "Best head back to the lab entrance and seal 'er off. Might be the only way to keep the Splicers out."
"Okay, time to book it." Kiki jerked a thumb and just like that they were running again, back to the reception area to seal down the labs. The lever for the lockdown was right there next to the desk.
"Did you get that door sealed?" Atlas asked.
"Yes, Atlas, we aren't idiots, thank you very much. Unlike some I could name…" Kiki snapped, taking the chance to inject herself with EVE and load her pistol.
"Hey! Watch it. But that's good, it'll buy you pair some time."
"Not long, by the looks." Kiki said warily. A bright circle of light appeared at the base of the door at the corner and began moving up, burning an orange line into the thick metal. "On your marks…" She rubbed her fingers together to get a nice strong shock of Electro Bolt ready for the first of the charge. Jack loaded his machine gun with a fresh magazine. "Get set…"