"But I have to find him!"
"Eleanor, you're in no shape to find him let alone fend off all those brute splicers."
"But I-I just," Eleanor pleaded just before vomiting what stomach contents that where left from her last session. Fred courteously held her hair while Stanley retrieved one of the unused napkins for when she was done.
"I know you want to do something but I cannot let you do it. You can hardly stand and we're no match for them."
Eleanor graciously accepted the napkin from Stanley and wiped her mouth. Her throat burned from the acid but at least her stomach felt much better.
"Why'd you want to save that asshole anyway?" Stanley chuckled as he tilted back his recently refilled goblet.
Fred grabbed the goblet and gave it to Eleanor. "Here, drink this."
"What is it?"
"Just water. It will help sober you up."
"But you told me it was alcohol."
"And the fact that you believed me meant you had already drunk enough."
Eleanor smirked as she drank the water. She was grateful for her friends. She thought about their time spent together, about when they had first met, about puking again- which she did. The carpet reluctantly accepted another permanent stain as she hurled mostly water and saliva.
"Feel better?"
Eleanor looked at him with blood shot eyes. "A… a little. But we still cannot leave Mathew. We have to help him."
"Eleanor, I didn't want to say this before but something is not right about that man. I might be just a feeling but I-," he paused midsentence lowering his eyes. "I don't think he is worth..."
Eleanor put her finger to Fred's lips and stared at him while Stanley hurled in the only planter left unbroken. She seemed to stare into his depths with fixating, unblinking eyes.
"You turned out okay, didn't you?"
To his shame and regret, Fred broke from her piercing gaze first.
"Everything will be okay."
"But how do you know?"
"Because I have friends like you."
And just like that, Eleanor disappeared. The space she invaded and the pressure against Fred's lips vanished. It took Fred's neural synopsis a moment longer before he realized she was gone.
"Damn it to hell," he declared. "Stanley? Stanley! Gha, useless drunkard."
Fred walked over to Stanley and picked his head out of the pot he had been deflowering.
"Come on! We have to go find Eleanor."
"Whats she do (Hic) this time. She need rescuing?"
"Ya, we need rescue her… so I can kill the stupid girl myself."
"Because I have friends like you," Eleanor replied with renewed determination. Her wish to find Mathew was suddenly granted as she teleported away. The sudden drop of energy caused her headache to spike. Then a weird event occurred. Eleanor seemed to be staring at Dionysus park all at once but everything was twisted and wavy.
She tried to touch the waves with her hand and saw her appendage warp as well. Eleanor knew she should be alarmed but she felt sluggish. Her next coherent thought consisted of the merry-go-round to which she found herself staring at.
"Well that was peculiar," she commented. Eleanor peered around the carousel and found herself to be alone. She quickly pulled out Markus's compass and consulted it. The arrow wavered for a moment then picked a direction to which Eleanor followed.
"I know Markus is a good person. And he had to have given me this compass for reason."
After two minutes of walking Eleanor came upon a room completely frozen. She stepped inside and saw the vapor from her breath freeze. The compass pointed to the back of the room. Eleanor took a third step in the room and four cameras began homing on her position. She did not react but walked to the back of the room where she found a frozen door shut tight.
She placed the palm of her hand to the door. She thought about heating the door and her hand radiated with heat. Eleanor gasped as the steel door melted a second later. In the adjacent room a huge screen hung on the far wall that was littered with footage from multiple security cameras. The second thing Eleanor noticed were several brute splicers standing around a desk sitting in front of the giant screen. Behind the desk sat a chair and in that chair sat a man with blonde hair and a green suit.
Eleanor edged forward and heard a squeak as she stepped on something soft. She looked down to see a pair of eyes disappear as the creature ran underneath the desk.
The man wearing the green suit got up from his desk. He made a wide pompous smile showing off his pearly white teeth. "Eleanor," Mathew said. "It appears that the jig is up."
Eleanor cocked her head. This turn of events revolved in her mind causing a cluster of questions."Where's Markus?"
One of the brute splicers standing closest to Mathew walked into the light revealing his face. Markus's head sagged and Eleanor could swear he looked like he had been crying. She took a step backward and felt something nudge her back. Eleanor looked backward to see Anthony standing there still toting his spear gun and a wide, menacing grin on his face.
"Mathew… what are you doing here?"
Mathew did not reply but smirked. His smirk turned into a chuckle and then a bellowing laugh. "You still do not realize. Well then I shall come clean. You seem to have found the nerve center of my business. But more fascinating than that we know about you."
"Know about me?"
"Yes, while I've been manipulating the populace of Dionysus Park around my fingers, you have been parading around Rapture with your own little agenda."
"... Around your fingers? What are you talking about?"
"If you must know I shall oblige. There have been fewer and fewer splicers to kill and harvest their ADAM to fulfill Mrs. Lamb's dream. But if I want to ascend from my position I need to find more wicked splicers to harvest. So I had a brute splicer cocktail created and secretly and selectively distributed to the masses. When they became brutes they showed one of two reactions: one, they go mad or two, they follow me blindly, obediently. Either way they serve my purposes very nicely."
Eleanor took a moment to take it all in. To her dismay, Fred was right about Mathew. She felt gullible and stupid for not seeing it earlier. "But why tell me all this."
Mathew ran his hand through his golden hair. "Because as grand as my schemes are they do not even compare with yours and you will be dead soon enough anyway."
A ball of fire formed in Eleanor's hands. She compressed the ball and built layers of swirling flames upon it. In her rage she sent it flying towards the big screen. The screen exploded with a resounding blast that sent glass shards flying everywhere. Mathew himself would have been torn to shreds if not for the two brute splicers that stepped in to shield him.
"Do not screw with words," Eleanor fumed. "What are you talking about?"
Mathew marched towards her. His finger jutted out pointing at her. "You are a fake."
Author's Notes: Eleanor's unpleasantries with alchohol are not unlike my own. Drinking and praying to the porcealin goddess seem to go hand in hand for me. As for being called a fake, well that has yet to happen. But like Mathew i do seem to have you, my readers, wrapped around my fingers. Buah hah ha. Mine is an evil laugh!
