Same disclaimers as before. Thanks to Ser Serendipity and TheDaedricPrinceOfCrossovers for the reviews!

Chapter 6: The Pathway to the Apocalypse

Elizabeth breathed deeply through her nose. Even in this world between worlds, the sea smelled of familiar salt with just a hint of dead fish. It was a revolting smell, but in a way was reassuring.

Silas stared out over the ocean. "Is this the sea?" he whispered. He bent down and leaned over the dock. He cupped his hand and drew some water to his mouth. "Is this salt?"

Booker drew his gun from his messenger bag and a cloth to clean it with. "Yes, now stop drinking it, you'll get dehydrated."

Elizabeth rolled her shoulders, cracking her neck and spine. "Alright, where do we begin?"

Booker pointed to the lighthouse. "This door leads to the Eternal Pathway."

"What's the Eternal Pathway?" asked Elizabeth.

"It's just what I call the path that goes between the lighthouses. You know, the one that forms as you walk it." Elizabeth nodded and started forwards. Booker holstered his gun and put away his cleaning cloth. Behind them, Silas was still looking at the horizon, enraptured by the new sight. Booker glanced back at him. "Silas! Let's go! If you think that a body of water is exciting, then we're gonna blow your friggin' mind." Together, they climbed the steps up to the lighthouse.

Elizabeth turned to Silas. "Hang on," she said; stopping the group, "You're going to need more than a knife. I'll get you something." She put her hands together and focused on the image of Chen Lin's gun shop in Columbia.

She was about to rip open a tear when Booker grabbed her wrist. "No," he said firmly, "If you open a tear, she can find us."

Elizabeth lowered her hands. By she, Elizabeth assumed Booker meant the assassin. "She can track us through tears?"

Booker scowled and rubbed his arm, as if feeling the scars of old wounds. "There are things you don't understand about the way your powers work, Elizabeth." He said cryptically, "And I pray you don't have to. The things I had to do to get my powers…" he shuddered and stomped his feet, "Enough of that, let's get going. Silas, you'll have to make do with a knife for now."

Silas shrugged. "It's cool." They climbed the last few steps to the lighthouse. On the door was nailed a piece of wrinkled, yellowed paper. Elizabeth and Booker glanced at each other uneasily as Silas leaned forward. "I can't quite read it…something about debt?"

"Leave it, Silas," breathed Elizabeth, "It's served its purpose." Silas shrugged and stepped back as Elizabeth pushed open the door and stepped onto the wooden pier of the Eternal Pathway. Booker followed with Silas.

Silas did a double-take. "What? Didn't we just…How did we?"

Booker held up his hand to stop Silas. "Si, my man, if you think about this inter-dimensional stuff for too long, it'll melt your brain. Take my advice and learn to just go with it, man." Silas nodded, but still looked entirely confused as he glanced back at the exit to the lighthouse they had just entered.

Elizabeth walked forward and the path created itself for each step she took. "What should we be looking for?"

Booker scratched his nose. "I can lead us in the general direction of the first world, but eventually you'll have to take over and guide us."

Elizabeth frowned. "What will I look for then? How will I know which world is the one we're looking for?"

Booker smirked, knowing the amazement to come. "Trust me, you'll know. For now, just follow me." Booker closed his eyes and sniffed the air. Without looking, he stepped forward along the path. Wordlessly, Elizabeth and Silas followed him.

They didn't know how long they walked in silence. Booker didn't open his eyes once, but walked without missing a step. When they came to a fork in the path, he would often turned to one road without hesitation. Sometimes, he would stop for a minute before making up his mind, but he always seemed confident with his choices. Occasionally, they would come to a lighthouse. Usually, Booker would ignore them and continue onwards, but once and a while he would stop and open his eyes. He would tell his traveling companions to stay put for a moment while he climbed the steps up to the lighthouse door and take a quick peek inside. Every time, he would come back down the stairs, shaking his head and closing his eyes as he led them onwards.

It seemed like they had been walking for hours when Silas jumped up. "What is that?" he exclaimed, pointing into the distance.

Elizabeth followed his finger and saw a mirror copy of the odd trio slowly trudging along an adjacent pathway. "It's us," she said, "In the future. Or maybe alternate versions of us in the past." Silas hesitantly raised his hand and waved to the group across the water. To Elizabeth's surprise, the alternate Silas turned to them. It grinned and waved back to a confused Silas.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Asked Silas.

Elizabeth gazed at the group as it moved along into the mist. "No," she said as she moved forward, "It's not."

"So should we be concerned?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "There's not much we can do. They…we…aren't harming…ourselves."

Silas stared at her. "Wow, this stuff really does boggle the mind."

Elizabeth laughed. "You have no idea."

They walked for a few more minutes in silence before Silas pointed again. "Look," he murmured to Elizabeth. Across the water on a separate pier were the assassin and her Big Daddy. The assassin was crouched down and examining the wood beneath her, tracking something. The Big Daddy seemed to be standing guard over her, turning its massive head every few seconds to look around.

Elizabeth felt Silas tense next to her. "I'm sorry, Silas," she said, taking his hand in hers, "There's nothing you can do about her right now." The assassin stood up abruptly and ran along the pier, the Big Daddy clanking after her. Silas and Elizabeth watched them go until they disappeared in the mist. They walked a few yards before they realized they were holding hands and both quickly dropped their arms to their sides. They were so self-conscious, they hadn't noticed that Booker had stopped moving and was looking back at them with his hands on his hips.

"Christ, you guys are 28 and 25 and you act like you're both 14." Elizabeth glared angrily at her biological father while Silas just looked confused. "Anyway, I need you to stay here."

Elizabeth blinked. "Why? Another lighthouse?"

Booker waved his hand and the mist parted slightly, showing a lighthouse. "Yeah, we're actually getting close to the point where you'll have to take over, but that's not the one we're looking for. No, I just have to go to the bathroom." Booker pushed past them and starting walking back the way they came. "I'll just be a minute. Stay here and I'll be right back." A few steps later and he had disappeared into the fog. Silas sighed and sat down on the stairs to the lighthouse. Elizabeth smoothed out her skirt and joined him. For a few moments, they sat in silence before Silas turned around and stared up at the lighthouse.

"What's wrong?" asked Elizabeth.

Silas slowly turned back to face forwards. "Nothing, I think." After a few seconds, he turned back. "Seriously, you don't hear anything?"

Elizabeth gave him a strange look. "Ahhh, no. Do you?"

Silas stood up. "Yeah. Someone's calling my name." He started walking up the stairs.

Elizabeth stood. "Um, Booker said to stay put."

"I'll be right back," called Silas over his shoulder as he continued climbing the steps.

Elizabeth watched him ascend into the fog and shook her head in frustration. "This," she told herself as she started to climb after him, "Is what is commonly referred to as a bad idea." She quickly caught up to Silas at the top of the stairs. He had his ear pressed against the wooden door.

Silas pointed to the door. "It's coming from behind here." He whispered. He opened the door.

"Silas no!" cried Elizabeth as he slipped through the crack. She ran after him and tried to grab his sleeve as he left that plane of reality, only to slip on the rocks and fall through the door with him.

They were tumbling down a steep, small, grey hill, twisting and turning painfully around one another until they rolled to a halt at the base. Elizabeth groaned as she lifted her head. She was lying on top of Silas and her arms were somehow tangled around his chest. She quickly stood up and looked around as Silas moaned and brushed himself off.

They were standing in a range of identical hills covered in grey ash and dead grass. Behind them, the lighthouse was a crumbling wreck atop the hill they had just fallen down.

"Dammit, Silas," sighed Elizabeth as she brushed ash off of her skirt. It smeared and left grey streak. She drooped her shoulders in frustration as Silas looked around.

"Where are we?" he asked. Elizabeth spun around and punched him in the arm. "Ouch! What?"

Elizabeth glared at him. "You just had to follow some mystery sound, didn't you! Christ! I know you're new to this whole thing, but show some friggin' common sense for god's sakes!" Silas recoiled from her as she hit him a few more times.

Silas stared at her with big eyes. "I'm…I'm sorry."

Elizabeth pulled her fist at the last second and sighed. "No, I'm sorry. You must be overwhelmed by all this." She put her hands at her sides and gave him a small smile. "C'mon, let's get out of here." She took him by the shoulder and led him as she marched up the hill back towards the lighthouse.

Silas looked out to the hills as he was pulled up. "The sound is gone." He murmured, "What the hell?"

To Elizabeth's credit, she got within ten feet to the lighthouse before the rocket hit. She and Silas were thrown back down the hill from the strength of the explosion. Luckily, they landed apart this time, sparing them from embarrassment. Elizabeth jumped up and drew her firearm, aiming it wildly around, seeking a target. Silas scrambled to his feet and drew his knife. The lighthouse was reduced to flaming rubble.

There was a distant roar and Elizabeth turned towards the sound. She scrambled up the hill opposite the lighthouse. She found herself overlooking acre upon acre of grey hills. Far in the distance, a dark horizon was growing slowly larger as the sound increased. It was an army, she realized, and it was in the process of attacking. Four dots appeared above the growing horizon. Missiles aimed at their position. Elizabeth's eyes widened and she ran down the hill

"What did you see?" Asked Silas as she came down towards him.

"Run!" was all she said as she dashed past. Silas wisely decided not ask questions and just ran with her. The missiles landed in the surrounding hills and sprayed waves of ash and dust on them. Elizabeth turned to look over her shoulder. Running just a few dozen yards behind them was the first wave of the attackers. They were dressed in black, one-piece suits with various decorative bandanas and facemasks protecting their eyes and mouths from the ashen desert. They wielded either strange, silver guns or short, rusty blades. They ran faster than horses and jumped over entire hills. Elizabeth actually squealed and ran as fast as she could.

Silas leaned forward and mad a mad dash to catch up with Elizabeth. "What is going on?" he yelled.

"Shut up and run!" Elizabeth ran between two hills. A massive, metal arm shot out of the hill just as Elizabeth and Silas ran past. Both of them ran head first into the metal limb and fell to the ground in pain. Elizabeth moaned and rubbed her nose as she looked up. The hill from which the arm had emerged from started to shake and the ash and dirt loosened and fell off, revealing a Big Daddy.

This Big Daddy was easily ten feet tall. Instead of having a drill hand as usual, it had a massive rocket cannon for a left hand and had four enormous and sharpened blades protruding from the wrist of its right hand.

Silas stared up at the Big Daddy. "Elizabeth," he said, "It got bigger."

Elizabeth tried to push herself up, "Don't worry, it's a different one than the one the assassin had."

"Oh, so I shouldn't be scared of it then?"

"Oh, no, you should be totally scared of it." The men following them stopped in their tracks when they saw the machine flex and roll its shoulders. With a mechanical roar, the Big Daddy charged, raising its cannon.

It was at that exact second that all hell broke loose. Almost every hill in eyesight shook and tossed off layers of dirt and ash to become titanic machine and human hybrids. The wave of men in black resumed their assault and opened fire on the Big Daddy army. The mechanical beasts clashed with the men in an orchestra of metal instruments, playing a symphony of war. Elizabeth kept her head down as a volley of bullets sailed over her and Silas. She hesitantly raised her gun, completely unsure of who to aim at. She had gone from having no targets to having too many targets, and she wasn't even sure who the targets should be.

As she was swiveling her gun back and forth between targets, a metal foot landed in front of her.

She looked up to see a Handyman leaning down and offering her his hand. "Come on, kids! This isn't the place to be right now." Elizabeth hesitated before sighing and deciding to throw her lot in with fate as she took the huge metal hand. Silas took the Handyman's other hand and together they were pulled up and slung over the Handyman's shoulders. The Handyman crouched down and Elizabeth could hear pressure building up in the Handyman's piston-powered legs. With a hiss of steam, the Handyman jumped almost thirty feet in the air. They landed and before Elizabeth could even process her surroundings, they were in the air again. For ten minutes or so, the Handyman carried Elizabeth and Silas through the battle. Every jump caused Elizabeth to realize the exact scope of the battle. The field stretched on for miles in every direction and the battle between the machines and the men.

Slowly, the Handyman began landing in areas with more machines than men. Eventually, they landed in a place where the hills were undisturbed. From there, the Handyman ran. Elizabeth shifted on his shoulder. Her abdomen was bruised from falling down on his metal shoulder pads over and over again.

She rubbed her stomach painfully. "Who are you?" she asked.

The Handyman slowed down to a slow trot as the sounds of battle faded into the distance. "Just an old fart in an autobody, ma'am."

Elizabeth glanced at him before closing her eyes, trying to ignore the pain. "How can you jump like that?" she asked, "That suit should hurt like hell."

The Handyman nodded to a tube at his neck. It led down underneath the metal armor of his outer shell. "Injects painkillers directly into my bloodstream. I haven't actually felt anything in almost fifty years."

Silas groaned and rolled over onto his back. "I think you just broke my spleen." Elizabeth turned and sat up on the broad shoulder to get a better look at the man inside the autobody. He had thick grey hair on his head and a scruffy white beard.

"Don't worry, lad." He said to Silas, "We have some pretty good doctors back at the base. I'm also fairly certain that if I broke your spleen, you'd be dead by now."

Silas glared at him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

The Handyman laughed, a good enough distraction for Elizabeth to turn her gun on his exposed human head. Upon seeing a firearm pointed at him, the Handyman stopped laughing, but kept moving forward. Elizabeth panted, the excitement of the last few minutes catching up with her, but her hands were firm and unwavering.

"Why did you save us?" she said, deadly soft.

"You-your coming was prophesized."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and cocked her gun, "I've had some bad experiences with prophets."

The Handyman continued walking through the maze of randomly placed hills, which Elizabeth now knew were just patient Big Daddies in disguise. The Handyman closed his eyes. "We were told that two pale people in white garb would come from the lighthouse and would show us the way to victory over the Evolutionaries."

Silas grunted from the other shoulder. "The Evolutionaries?"

"You met them back there." Said the Handyman, opening his eyes, "Men and women so twisted by generations of radiation, Sprigs, splicing, abusing artificial evolution substances, and overdosing on CAIN-"

"CAIN?" interupted Elizabeth.

"A mix of ADAM and EVE." The Handyman fixed her with a questioning look, "How do you not know these things?"

Silas sat up. "Well, you probably won't believe us, but-"

Elizabeth interrupted again. "Silas." Her commanding tone caused the Kiln City veteran to shut up. Elizabeth had learned from years of experience that it was easier just to lie than explain the whole travel-through-time-and-space thing. "Let's just say we haven't been around for a while."

The Handyman shrugged, causing both of his passengers to grab his arm for support. "Anyway, they went crazy after the Apocalypse-"

"Look," sighed Elizabeth, "I hate to interrupt so much, but…" The Handyman gave her a strange look and pointed into the distance. Elizabeth stared into the grey sky and her vision lowered until she gasped at a horrible sight.

It was a mountain at one point. A huge crater had been carved out of the side, almost like God himself had scooped out a sizable chunk of the mountain. Elizabeth looked down at the ash crunching under the Handyman's feet. "Oh," she whispered in shock, "Oh Jesus."

"What?" asked Silas, "I don't get it."

"Ash, Silas," Elizabeth said with a tear running down her cheek, "You lived in a super volcano. It went off just after we left." Silas stared at the mountain, understanding dawning on his face. "We're not in a different world; we're just in the future of yours."

"Not many of us are still around who saw the eruption." Said the Handyman conversationally, "I'm actually almost two hundred years old."

"Don't look a day over a hundred and fifty." Muttered Silas, his eyes still on the disfigured mountain he had once called home.

The Handyman chuckled, but then sighed. "The ash cloud covered the sun and the heat destroyed half the continent. Nothing grew for a few decades until some egghead invented artificial vegetables and we were more or less able to restart society. Of course, the Evolutionaries made it a little difficult, but the Mayor showed us these nifty autobody suits and helped us reprogram the old Rapture robots for defense."

"Who's the Mayor?" Elizabeth asked.

The Handyman rounded the final hill. "Oh, you'll meet him soon enough." About a football field away stood a dirty metropolis made of harsh, rusting iron and steel. It was surrounded by a ten-foot wall of sewn-together metal. In a few quick bounds, the Handyman vaulted over the wall.

The city was densely populated. Elderly Handymen were chatting with each other on street corners while children with toys darted between their legs. Teens flirted and kissed in the shadows while their parents rolled their eyes at their progenies in the open markets.

All activity changed as soon as eyes landed on Elizabeth and Silas atop the Handyman's shoulders. For a moment, there was universal silence. Then there was an uproar that made the sounds of the battle seem like a kitten's purr. The Handymen raised their arms, grateful for a victory they had been waiting for since they were young men. Teens and children stared in awe at the legend they had only chuckled at before and the adults cheered for the truths that their parents had told them.

The Handyman began walking through the city as the crowd split before him. People cheered from the streets and smiled down from the buildings as they past. Elizabeth looked around and gaped at the level of support she was getting. A parade started to form behind them as the citizenry tried to keep their supposed saviors in sight.

The Handyman stopped walking forward in a large square. The crowd hushed slightly as a team of Handymen parted the crowd and made their way towards Elizabeth and Silas. One of them had a wide, blue sash with the word 'Mayer' written on it in dark, rigid letters. It was this one that approached them first.

"Well it's about time!" he crowed joyfully. He was bald and had trimmed white beard.

Silas's eyes widened. "No. Way."

"Silas, m'boy!" the old man cried, opening his arms wide, "Oh! I've missed you, kid!"

Silas jumped from his post on the Handyman's shoulder and into the arms of the Mayor. "Grandpa!" Elizabeth's jaw dropped. She had heard of this man before, of course, but she had never met him.

"Now," said Jack Ryan, "Why don't you introduce me to your lady friend and we can go get some lunch in town hall. I think we have a lot to discuss."

. . .

Feel free to comment and review.

Sorry, I forgot to space it.