CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I couldn't move. I could be alive, or not. I could be dead, or not. Seeing as I'd never been dead before, I wouldn't have anything to compare it with. As it turns out, I wasn't dead yet that time, either. I blinked my eyes but couldn't focus them. I was staring up at a strange curved wall that turned into a ceiling. I was on an angle. Arms, legs, neck, couldn't move at all. I pulled and realized I barely had any strength, either.
"About time for you to wake, Mister Nuckles," the man's deep voice seemed oddly familiar. I couldn't even focus my hearing to tell where he was, but I knew he was close. "Imagine my surprise and delight at finding you here in our little, private estate. Not quite the luxury of Olympus Arms, but I tell you, the privacy is next to none in the deep."
"This is what the Russkies call luxury?" I said, still not sure where he was.
"Luxury is something unnecessary in Soviet Russia. A true Bolshevik has no need of the lavish waste you Americans seem to require. Even Rianovsky, the traitor, has been infected by such wasteful, capitalist ways." He seemed to be working on something. Something that moved.
"Abernathy, are you going to get to the point or are you going to bust my chops all night?" I said.
John Abernathy's face suddenly loomed over mine, a touch of something akin to fever in his eyes. "Nux, you never were one for the working man, were you? Always doing the bidding of the overlords, yet never working for yourself. Surely you must realize you can live for yourself, we all can, just not in the guise of this whorish city of salt and flesh."
"You don't know the first thing about me, Abernathy."
"Oh, but I do. I do. I know why you're in Rapture. Why you had to leave Philadelphia, I heard through the office. Did you think you had covered your tracks so expertly?" He sounded like he really did know.
"They had it coming." I said.
"Yes, I suppose from your point of view they did, didn't they? I still remember the final situation report from Philadelphia. Once you found out the strike leaders were agents of the motherland, you went into their homes, all on the same night, and left lead bullets in center of their heads."
"Not exactly." I closed my eyes. "I didn't know they were Russkies until after the fact."
"Delightful," Abernathy crowed. "No wonder Rianovsky sought you out as he did. The man who single-handedly ended the great strike of Philadelphia."
"Yeah, I was a real national hero. Untie me and I'll give you an autograph."
"In time, Nux, in time. First, however, I was going to tell you a secret. You like secrets, don't you?" He was beaming. He walked over to the table across the room to the cage where he'd been working moments ago. Inside, the thing, whatever it was, began to whip back and forth in madness.
"What is that thing?" I asked.
"This, Nux, is Avrova. It's latest vehicle, of course. We knew we couldn't simply go around jabbing the good people of Rapture with needles, so we found another way. After gestating in our light mass below, these little beauties become the perfect carriers for the serum." He held the cage forward. The foot-long creature smashing itself on the thin bars, trying to break free, right towards me.
"Sea slugs," I said. "You're grand scheme is to infect sea slugs?"
"You must have more vision, Nux. Like the matryoshka doll, one plan inside another, inside another." Abernathy was on his pedestal. "We began with the light mass, the Avrova below. Then the sea slugs, as you call them. We have already begun infecting Fontaine's workers. We just needed to raise the awareness. So, we took a pair of our subjects, and released them in a place that seemed most opportune for the authorities of Rapture to take notice."
"Rapture Day. The brute. The beauty," I whispered.
"Yes, Nux. No doubt your wonderful Dr. Tenenbaum has already made the connection between those bodies to some of her, shall we say, earlier work. It's surprising, you know we had no idea she would be down here when we arrived. The gifts of fate. An early pioneer of the research, waiting for us already," he smiled. "I have no doubt she will soon 'discover' the sea slugs and take our project to the next step for us."
"I don't think so."
"You still fail to understand, don't you, Nux? When they learn the effects of the Avrova, whatever they end up calling it, they'll be hooked. Eventually, they all lose their minds, I'm sorry to say. We won't have to do any of the work. They'll do it all for us." Abernathy was fruit salad, but he was right. "And now, Nux, you will join the great project."
He opened the cage, and the sea slug leapt onto my face.