"Daddy!"
The overjoyed little girl was just about to go full tear towards the hulk, if not for Elizabeth catching at her tattered skirt in the last second. "No! Don't let him notice you!"
Sally did not seem to understand the logic behind the order, "Why? He can help!"
"He would kill me if he saw you at my side," she explained. Elizabeth did not presume on another one of these dreadful creatures circling around the department store. And a different type to boot. He had a helmet that looked more like the piece she remembered from her richly illustrated copy of a Jules Verne collection, but he also had something on his shoulder that was akin to a grenade launcher. The nearby groups of splicers cautiosly cleared a wide path before the monster, in whatever direction he decided to take his patrol.
She would not have a chance against that arsenal with her diminished powers and a few tranquilizer darts.
Sally was adamant though, "But you're not bad. I'll just tell him not to hurt you."
The woman shook her head, "I don't think it works that way, dear. He just doesn't know any better. I'm sorry, but we can't take him with us," she said apologetically.
The Little Sister's tiny shoulders visibly fell as she gave a last longing look to the receding Big Daddy. Elizabeth felt an immense relief, seeing that the child chose her over the loyal guardians she was conditioned to follow. She probably achieved something big just now, though she was not sure if this newfound loyalty came from her own character, or from the girl's general naiveté. Anyhow, she was grateful for it.
"Okay, the Silver Fin is supposed to be right up there," she guided Sally's gaze towards the upper floor of the area in the middle. As they have slowly stepped out of the entrance and into open space, Elizabeth saw one of the splicers herded away by the Rosie turn his head towards them, then making a surprised little jump. After some hectic gestures he gave to his buddies, she found the whole group of four turning their heels, eyes on the prize and weapons drawn. But they had to yet pass by the Big Daddy on the way back without drawing his attention to their lucky catch, so they were nervously tiptoeing near the wall in single file.
They had about five seconds to go until those four burst into a stampede.
Elizabeth immediately dragged Sally in the opposite direction where she spotted a vent earlier. She heard the splicers hasten their steps and shout indistinctly behind them. By the time she hastily got the girl into the vent, a series of bullets already bedded themselves in the wall, dangerously close.
"Brat's too much for you to have alone, lass!" gurgled a burly one with the tommy gun, now audibly, "Let's just share like good friends, eh?"
Elizabeth worked her way up successfully, if somewhat ungracefully when a sturdy hand grabbed her right ankle and started yanking her back outside. "Ain't goin' nowhere, toots!" he sputtered.
No matter how hard Elizabeth was kicking his grotesquely disfigured face, the resolute splicer still did not let go of her leg. Then she snatched her air grabber and guided the spinning blades into the arm of her now screaming attacker. It did the trick, and the woman quickly scrambled deeper into the vent and after Sally, leaving the cursing bunch behind and putting the bloodied tool back onto her belt. The girl must have been quite ahead of her for she could not make out her figure anywhere in the dark tunnel. "Sally!" she shouted, feeling safe to do so in the Little Sisters' exclusive highway, "Where are you?"
"Over here! I know the way!" came the cheerful answer from somewhere further along the way, the echoes made it hard to pinpoint. Elizabeth did not find it easy to keep up with the girl, who obviously had the advantage of crawling in these spaces as a second nature. "Wait a second, darling! Let me catch up a bit, okay?"
"... me, I ... know ... to go," the response was muffled now, as the woman reached a junction, both paths leading slightly upwards to the left and to the right. She opted for the left one.
"Sally, wait up!"
No response, and another branch right ahead. She did not want to think about what would happen if she got lost in this labyrinth. Echoes of strange noises could be heard from what Elizabeth determined to be the left one, and so she followed. Light poured in from the end of the tunnel, only to disappoint the woman when she peeked out. She was at the same hub space again where they started from, only at a different wall and a somewhat elevated point. All she did was go in a big circle around the stairs.
However, the Silver Fin was in clear sight now, just adjacent to the end of her vent. Surrounded by idle splicers.
Oh, they just have to be everywhere.
Just as she finished grunting though, the heavy steps of the Rosie began resonating on the marble stairs. His seemingly aimless wander brought him towards the splicers, and Elizabeth almost hoped that he would scare away the lingering obstacles who were moving a little more cautiously now, aware of the Daddy's presence. Then he just passed them by without as much of a growl.
The wayward Lamb noticed a faint shimmering close to the ceiling.
A tear! Oh please be useful...
She willed it to rip open as it slowly revealed some neatly ironed, striped curtains hanging from the central column's edge. After closing it with a frown, she quickly gave it another go. This time, a lone apple tree flickered into existence, leaning from the small patch of soil the tear allowed through with it. Elizabeth almost dismissed this one in tow, but stopped herself when she saw the apples gently shaking to the rhythm of the giant's closing steps. Once the Daddy was roaming directly under the tree, two apples finally gave up and fell squarely onto the back of his head with a loud splotch. Then he halted. A mild moan quickly intensified into one of his terrifying howls as he turned back towards the splicers, the yellow lights on his helmet now glowing bright red.
"Eh... Uncle Tin Can looks right grumpy t'night," said the nearest one with half a face, alerting the others.
"The hell did you piss it off with, damn kid?" cried the next one.
"I ain't done nothin'!"
Then the Rosie started running, and so did they. "Don't look at me you blasted tank!" the one running on the front shouted above his shoulder. The Daddy launched a proximity mine into the rail, the impact barely missing them, then continued to chase the group down the stairs. The sound of fired bullets and angry screams were already growing distant.
Without a single shot. Booker could take notes.
Elizabeth allowed herself a smug grin as she climbed out of the vent and approached the now unguarded entrance to the Silver Fin, only to find the door stuck and the mechanism broken. She had to think of something quick before Sally could get into trouble inside. Crawling back into the vent system did not seem like a viable option with her lacking sense of direction. Then she noticed a crowbar lying on the floor, near a thick streak of blood leading away from the spot she stood on.
Looks like I'm not the first one who tried to get in here. At least he left a trail.
She followed the trail of blood into a nearby room, where it ended at a dead body illuminated by the flickering lights, a scroll of stained blueprints lying in his lap. Elizabeth softly pulled it out to have a better look and started mumbling to herself. "It's the schematics of the vent system..." she followed the many crisscrossing lines with her index finger, "...and that's where I took a wrong turn. Then Sally must have taken..." she tapped on a different line, "...this route. And it seems like central heating came from this room... so it stands to reason that the duct work should go to Sucho-" she looked at the tube above her that should have led into the adjacent wall, but was instead cut off and blocked by an out-of-place cabinet. "Wait a minute..."
Upon pushing the heavy piece aside, it revealed an opening into the wall, no doubt connecting the room with the restaurant.
Suchong wasn't exactly a master of subterfuge.
After memorizing the main routes of the elaborate vent system from the blueprint, she discarded it and pulled herself into the open conduit. After a short crawl forward and a small hop down, Elizabeth was met with a rather large portrait of an all-business Suchong.
The place was awfully quiet. She walked along the corridor towards the relatively well-lit reception desk, and what she has seen left her mouth agape. A miniature of a distinctly Columbian-looking block on the table, held in the air by what had to be some trickery with a magnet, as well as various pictures pinned on the wall. Pictures of her, Booker, and Monument Tower.
"That's... what I was afraid of. I must have left a tear behind when I came here. I wonder how much they know," she looked at the one with her at the center, being in the middle of a dance with a smile on her face, no doubt taken at Battleship Bay. She barely recognized the figure. That was the last time she remembered actually smiling, it almost felt like it depicted a different person. "But I guess they already know too much."
Her eyes lingered some more on Booker's picture. She did not recall ever seeing him with a dumbfounded face like that. If it were not for the situation, she would even have found it funny, almost wishing to embarrass the pokerfaced veteran by showing it to him.
An audio diary had been carelessly tossed into a half-open case, with 'Frank Fontaine' written as the owner's name. It rang a bell to Elizabeth, since the man in question was the biggest thorn in Ryan's side at a time, and so curiosity got the better of her. The message started playing.
'Whatever the hell you're doin' other than what I pay you for, needs to take a backseat, Mr. Genius. The new plasmids are way behind schedule, Security Bullseye was supposed to come out a week ago, damn it! This ain't the time for culinary pet projects. I'll cut you some slack for engineering my Ace in the hole, but my benevolence only goes so far.'
"Well, he was busy for sure," she frowned, looking at the photos again. She left for the stairs leading to the upper floor and made her way through the airlock, where a pitch black room awaited.
"Sally? Are you here?" Elizabeth pricked her ears for an answer, and almost jumped out of her skin when something touched her hand.
"What took you so long?" asked an annoyed Sally.
"Good grief, dear, don't scare me like that!" came the relieved reply. "I lost you in the tunnels, even though I asked you to wait for me," Elizabeth reprimanded while pointing at the grimacing girl.
"I didn't know you were that slow..."
To this, the woman could just sigh. "Never mind. Can we turn the lights on here somehow?" she began feeling the wall for a switch but could not find anything.
After some eager pitter-patter from Sally and the sound of a lever being pulled down, the place was now lightened up, with all the bulbs being surprisingly functional. After Elizabeth's pupils adjusted to the sudden brightness, she noticed something on the returning girl that was not there before. A sparkling pendant stuck out on her ragged little dress like a sore thumb. The woman gasped a little when she saw the familiar bird figure on it.
"Sally, can I see that pendant you have?"
The girl eyed her a bit varily, but reluctantly took the piece off and handed it to her, "I found it in the hidey-hole. It's pretty."
"It's… mine. I lost it a while ag-"
"No!" the Sister suddenly exclaimed as she tried to snatch it back, "Finder's keepers!"
"Sally, please, it… it means a lot to me."
The child hesitated for a second. "Was it a gift?"
Elizabeth looked down at the charm, gently rubbing it with her thumb as she answered, "Yes."
Sally stopped reaching for it and folded her little arms, "No fair. I never get any gifts. Not even from Daddy."
"Well, that is about to be remedied. If we make it out safe, I'll be sure to get you something special," said the woman with a wink.
"Promise?"
"Promise." She closed her fist on her sole possession, "I wonder how it got all the way here. We came quite a long way since it went missing."
"Must have been that rat I took it from," Sally added nonchalantly.
Elizabeth stopped rubbing it upon hearing that and held it away for a second with a disgusted frown. She quickly descended the stairs and used some remaining detergents in the kitchen before putting it on her neck where it belonged.
It was a small thing, but the world suddenly felt a little lighter.
Stepping out of the kitchen, she looked around, not the least bit stricken by the absence of any kind of machinery, much less a Siphon. The place was a mess, with various tools, cut cables and fallen stands lying around an empty circle on the tiled floor.
The woman descended the stairs and inspected the photos on the abandoned desks. The Luteces, the tear device, and herself, while first crossing the imaginary border between Columbia and Rapture.
"Huh," Elizabeth mused, "If it wasn't certain enough already, it is now. Suchong had built a Siphon, and it was here."
She glanced back onto the cleared spot and bit her lip in frustration, "But where the hell is it?"
Meanwhile, the little girl began to explore the now illuminated restaurant, and shortly shouted for her warden excitedly from the upper floor, "Come here 'Lizabeth, there's a big drawing here!"
The woman galloped to her immediately to have a look on the finding. It was yet another desk with schematics laid out on it in a disorderly fashion, obviously belonging to the device in question.
Elizabeth began to study them intently. While still in Columbia, she never actually saw what her leash looked like, but the elaborate design in front of her with its branching Tesla coils and menacing height seemed a safe bet for the contraption's purpose. There were also some peculiar lines of script written near the project that strangely resembled chemical formulas, all crossed with a long red line going across the paper. Only they made little sense if her knowledge of chemistry could be trusted.
"What are those?" asked Sally, pointing at the same set of characters Elizabeth was trying to place.
"They represent molecules, but I don't know what they have to do with-" she stopped mid-sentence as the solution to the mystery clicked inside her head, "Oh I see now. It's a code. A Vigenére cipher..."
Just like the one I last practiced in my tower. Convenient.
"I just need a key phrase to decipher it." The woman shuffled through the pile of schematics and blueprints to find it, but soon returned to the first page to look at it more thoroughly.
"Huh," she tapped on the 'Suchong' logo at the bottom, "It's right here. Never underestimate the fallibility of the egomaniac."
"What's an egomaniac?" enquired Sally.
"A person who thinks he's better than anyone. Like our little doctor here."
"And Ryan the Lion?"
"Yeah, him too," Elizabeth chuckled.
She started decomposing the script, recalling the periodic table and the Vigenére square shading from her studies, "So if Hydrogen is A and Iron, the twenty-sixth element is C.."
Cl-He(2)-Mn-Sc-Mg-V-F-S-Ar-Cr.
Atomic Numbers are 17-2(2)-25-21-12-23-9-16-18-24,
Which correspond with Q-B(2)-Y-U-L-W-I-P-R-X.
O-N-G-S-U-C-H-O-N-G
Q in the O row belongs to C, B in the N row belongs to O…
A few minutes later, she solved all of them.
"A CO2 scrubber, some cathode tubes, a heat sink, fuses, amplifiers… It's quite a list," she remarked.
The attentive Little Sister was rather amazed, "You read all of that from these?"
"Yes. You could learn it one day, too. It's easier than you think."
"Will you teach me later?"
Elizabeth looked into her hopeful eyes and waited a second before answering, "I'd love to, but… " she broke eye contact, "We'll see, okay?"
Sally's face fell a bit, but she nodded before asking her next simple question, "Where do we go now?"
"Well, seeing that the Siphon is already functioning, whatever parts Suchong needed to finish it had been already taken care of," she continued thinking aloud, "Since Fontaine is dead, and Suchong is in Ryan's employment again, it was probably the King himself who helped him with his little endeavor." She glanced at the lower floor again, with the mess being a sign of a hasty relocation.
"It was Ryan who sunk this whole department down here. He must have made sure to have his new little toy at arm's range… and not in this soon-to-be prison. Now that we're stuck here, with no way of turning it off, he counts on me to just give in and do as he orders." Her tone was getting more and more irritated by the end of the sentence as she walked back and forth during the monologue.
Sally followed her every movement with her glowing eyes, waiting patiently for a conclusion.
Elizabeth stopped her rambling, looked straight at the girl and stood firm.
"Every road leads to Rapture. We're getting out of here."