Hey ya. Sorry for the long wait(s), betas are busy. Updates will be slow (as you may have noticed), but steady. Fear not, this story has an end, and it will be finished, hopefully within the year. Yeah, I too hate the ones that get abandoned halfway. I'm planning 8-10 chapters overall plus the epilogue. Just be patient with me, I'm a lazy dog.
On with the chapter now.
She stared a little more at the creamy slice in front of her. At least the twins did not leave them empty-handed, as she was indeed hungry as a hunter. Sally already finished hers and returned to Elizabeth, tugging at her skirt with chocolate-stained hands. "Where do we go now?"
Good question, thought the woman. But she did not want to convey the continuous impression of a clueless airhead. For the child's sake, she had to at least act like she had the slightest idea about what she was doing. Booker did this all the time, it could not be that hard.
Yeah, and it always ended so well.
Elizabeth gently wiped off Sally's begrimed face with her sleeve, "How was the cake?"
The girl licked her lips again, in case there were any more sweet crumbs left around her mouth, "Tasty! But a little chewy in the core."
"Well, it can't hurt, I guess." Who am I kidding? I could devour a whole dessert table by myself.
She ate it up in two, particularly big bites, almost choking on something lumpy. She hastily removed it from the mouthful of goods to see what it was.
A crinkled piece of paper.
Elizabeth's eyes kindled at the sight for an instant. The uncanny duo might have given us a hint after all. She unfolded the tiny sheet, which depicted the familiar cage symbol and a drawing of Monument Tower on the other side. Nothing else.
The woman's brief glint of hope quickly turned into a disappointed frown. She voiced her reaction aloud, as if shouting for someone that was not there anymore, "Is this some kind of joke? Because I'm not laughing."
She angrily stuffed the note into her belt and started searching the room for anything remotely useful. She had a Siphon to find and a girl to take care of. A simple Air Grabber and a few unreliable tears might not be enough for future encounters with the lurking horrors that would await them.
She was busy shuffling through a drawer when Sally timidly approached her, and as was her custom, she asked something completely unexpected.
"What's your name?"
The woman stopped her activity for a second to give the girl a perplexed look. It just hit her that amidst all the commotion, she never actually introduced herself.
"I...It's Elizabeth," she said, trying to put on a reassuring expression. She even managed a small smile.
"It's a pretty name. Whatcha looking for, Elizabeth?"
"Something we could use against... bad angels." A determined Sally then hopped to the next room to find something that matched the description.
Elizabeth could not stop being fascinated about the innocence that beamed from the child's every step and the contrast it had with this uncaring place that had surrounded her all her life. It was not too long ago when she herself had been in an oddly similar state, in an even more similar situation. And then the twins pop up in much the same manner to offer nothing but a meaningless choice and some vague riddles.
She subconsciously reached for her pendant, only to have her eyes open wide when she only touched an empty space on the neck of her blouse, with an untangled ribbon.
No... please no. Where did I lose it? It was there when... Oh, it could be anywhere by now.
She was not sure why she suddenly felt so disheartened about this tiny piece of nothing, her own meaningless little choice. Or rather Booker's. The only thing she kept from her own world of imprisonment. She took a deep, mournful breath.
It doesn't matter.
Sally reappeared around the corner with a burly Teddy bear in hand, eagerly showing it to Elizabeth. "Look, Mr. Buttons is good with angels!"
A tired sigh escaped the woman's lips as she took the doll from her. She remembered having one very much like it back in her tower. Songbird had brought it to her one morning after she had been nagging him for a new toy all month. When she inevitably got bored of it about a year later, she decided to give her worn little companion a makeover and changed it's color to flaming red. The Teddy was gone the next day and she had never seen it again. Now she was wondering what had happened to the thing.
"Sweetheart, that's not exactly what I had in m-"
She just noticed something protruding from the back of the toy's head. She pulled it out to discover it as some kind of bolt with a small bell attached to its pointed tip.
"I wonder what this belongs to. It sure seems like something we could use."
They continued to scan the room and Elizabeth soon found the device in question, carefully positioned to block the door to the next area. She inspected it intently, then loaded the weapon with the curious bolt, which softly clicked into place. Now she had a mild suspicion about what the little bell was for.
"Someone must have been really desperate if he used this just to lock the entrance." She did not see any corpses on the way here, the fellow might have got lucky. But as she peeked through the glass, she could see the possible source of his or her plight. Three splicers, all regulars. No guns.
Elizabeth decided not to waste her singular ammunition on them, she had a feeling it would serve them better at a later time, among more dire circumstances. This bunch did not seem all that bright, she could pick them out one by one using the hooks around the ceiling. She turned to the silently waiting Sally, "I'll take care of these. Just stay here, be silent, and wait until I come back for you, okay?"
"Will you really come back? You're big and smart. You could get out easier without me, you know," said Sally, awkwardly kicking the nonexistent dust in front of her.
Elizabeth could not yet figure out the child's frequent mood swings, now she seemed rather distrustful again. Not that she could blame her.
"I won't abandon you," stated Elizabeth firmly.
Sally looked up as if she was half expecting this answer, "You wouldn't, would you?"
The woman gave her shoulder an assuring stroke, then quietly opened the door and slipped into the canteen and behind her first victim. He was standing alone in the front area, while two women were chatting away on the other side. A hit on the head and a collapsing body later, Elizabeth was already hanging above them.
"And what does Ryan the Lion warn us? Those who cannot create will always steal from those who do," rambled the first one.
"Never mind that now. Tell the minister he'll have to wait. It's my daughter's wedding, not his," replied the second.
They were walking around the room at a leisurely pace and did not seem like splitting up any time soon. Elizabeth was struggling to keep her hold on the Air Grabber.
I did not think this through.
"'Where's your empathy?' asks Peter the parasite while he picks your pocket," continued the crazed dame. "You know this word, empathy. You'll find it in a dictionary under L-I-E."
Elizabeth gritted her teeth. She could swear she felt her bones stretching.
"Come now, this rubbish has no place at the ceremon-"
They noticed the fallen man on the floor. "Not again!" The two quickly spread out in opposite directions, finally letting their stalker to softly land in their dead space. Getting rid of her heels earlier proved to be a wise decision. She approached one panicked lunatic and landed a now well-practiced blow to her head. Then she heard a gunshot from behind.
"Tramps were not invited! We have rules here!" The last splicer sent another bullet her way, shattering a glass on the shelf just past her shoulder.
Elizabeth hastily rolled behind a counter before the woman's aim got any better.
Where did she get a pistol? Some plan I had there. I could really use a tear right now.
But there were none. Just more shots hitting her cover. Then a small pause, as she heard the maniac slowly closing in to get a better angle. She readied her crossbow for a distracting shot, when a sharp whistle sounded from the nursery and made the splicer turn away for a second. Enough for Elizabeth to grab hold of a bottle and throw it at her. "Catch this, Dimwit!"
It shattered right below her vertex, with enough force to make her a bit dizzy. Elizabeth immediately shot out from behind the bar, thwarted the screaming woman, and pulled her arms behind so she could truss them up with the red ribbon hanging from her neck.
"Mind your blasted manners when the cleric is speaking!" cried the splicer, her hands now safely cuffed and her dropped pistol out of reach. Elizabeth tore a piece of the other woman's dress and constrained the squirming creature's swollen ankles with it for good measure.
She picked up the pistol and checked its cylinder, only to find it empty. "Hmph. Typical."
Her frustrated prisoner on the floor did not finish her fit, "Go on and just smack the groom as well!"
"Oh just shut up, will you." She shuffled through the room, fetching a few unopened cans of pineapples, a bottle of soda, and twenty-four Rapture dollars altogether. There was also an audio diary from the former cook, but aside from the usual bashing of Ryan, it did not prove to be all that interesting, so she went back to retrieve Sally.
The little girl was patiently waiting for her, right on the spot she had been before. Elizabeth softly patted her hair. "Good call with the whistle, but please, don't ever do it again."
"You were in trouble."
"Yes, but if you draw attention to yourself I might not be able to help you in time," explained the woman.
"Oh, okay."
They headed for the locked exit of the canteen, and Elizabeth started working on the lock.
The still fidgeting splicer screamed at them some more, "You disrupted a family event, you tramp! Atlas will set this right, you'll see. ATLAS WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD!"
"Noisy angel," stated Sally.
"Don't mind her," said Elizabeth, opening the lock with a satisfying click. "Off we go."
The pair continued their route through a few corridors where the girl found two more bolts in a puddle. The woman recognized them to be slightly different than the previous one, instead of a bell, it had some kind of strange liquid contained below the tip. "It's probably phencyclidine or sodium thiopental," she mused.
"Phencycle soddy-," tried Sally.
"Sleepy darts," smiled Elizabeth.
"Ooh."
As they stepped through the next door, Elizabeth's eyes met the first thing in hours that could be considered as a real clue. A billboard.
"The Silver Fin restaurant, closed by the order of Doctor Suchong," she read the sign aloud. The very same place she used as her entrance to this world.
Second entrance, actually.
And Suchong shut it down right after. "Well, it's as good a start as any."
Sally already started to explore the place, quickly bumping into a kinetoscope at the front of something akin to a night club.
"Can I see it?" asked the girl innocently. Elizabeth stepped closer, frowning as she saw the title "Sex without compromise". Curiosity got the better of her however, and after watching the short herself, she had an awkward blush on her cheeks and a definite answer for Sally.
"No."
"But-"
"It's... adult business. It would bore you. Also," she pointed at the entrance of the 'Cupid's Arrow', "we're not going in there."
After all, she already knew the place, and its piquant interior was definitely not for a child's eyes. Even though she was tempted to check if her old dress was still in the same place she had left it.
Sally opened her mouth for another word, but thought the better of it and closed it.
Elizabeth then approached the still functioning Circus of Values machine nearby and bought herself a First Aid Kit. Luckily, the thing had been hacked a while ago, so she could afford a bag of chips for her ward as well. She sat down on the stairs to bandage her feet after having them cut with glass shards a while ago. She did not realize how much it hurt until all the adrenaline subsided.
"Why didn't it heal up by now?" sounded the peculiar Little Sister's next odd question. Elizabeth looked at her confusedly, "What do you mean? It happened about an hour ago."
"My cuts go bye-bye at once. I thought yours would too."
The woman descended her gaze to inspect the girl's bare feet, dirty as they were, but free of the tiniest of scars.
Incredible. Must have something to do with the ADAM they carry.
She handed the bag of chips and the soda to her, then opened a can of pineapples for herself. "Eat as much as you can. I don't know when we would find something next."
Sally complied, eating up the snack in a flash. After the hearty meal, they used the elevator to ascend to the floor where Elizabeth remembered the Silver Fin had been. They stepped out to an empty walkway with echoes of someone playing a guitar in the distance. They cautiously closed on the source of the song, with Elizabeth having a firm grip on the crossbow. If the man was aware of their presence, he did not give any sign of it. He just kept singing to the rhythm, strumming the guitar in his lap.
"...If Ryan can have it, why can't I? Why can't I have a slice of that pie?..."
"Should we have kept a piece of cake for him too?" asked a confused Sally.
"I doubt it would have helped him sweetheart. Let's just... leave him be," answered Elizabeth while herding the girl towards Bathyspheres Deluxe, crossbow still at the ready. What awaited them behind the door was a huge intersection of once prominent shops and pricey bars, now ransacked by splicer hordes. And there was something else. Elizabeth already felt her hands shaking when she heard the resounding clamps of metal boots nearby. She did not even register Sally's happy exclaim beside her.
"Daddy!"