The Obsolete Protector

by M10m gas mask soldier

Upon being revived 10 years after being murdered by Sofia, Subject Delta has to fight his way back to his beloved master Eleanor. However, he is not alone. Upon being reunited, the two Alpha Series Big Daddies must get to their captured daughters before it is too late. Meanwhile, Eleanor wishes for Delta to be more than her father. Burial at Sea connections. AU BioShock 2.

6. Chapter 6: The Stakes

Ch. 6: The Stakes

A.N.:

Hey everyone!

Sorry the update took so long.

See, what happened was that I read the first few chapters and I realized that I was basically doing a "walkthrough".

As I do not intend for this story to be one, I decided to alter the plans that I had for it.

In my original plan, I was going to have Delta tracking the other Alpha Series Big Daddy's progress for the majority of the story and then, around Fontaine Futuristics, the two would finally cross paths.

However, I have decided against that and have made adjustments to my future chapter ideas. I think I have made a good balance though.

Besides, I refuse to believe that Delta and Sigma are the only survivors of the Alpha Series, and even Delta was resurrected and then "absorbed" by Eleanor so...can't really count him.

I mean, even ten years later with decayed suits and being warped out of their minds, they are still among the toughest enemies encountered in the game. You're telling me that at least one didn't "make it"? Yet, that little scrawny Poole survived? Whatever, get out of here...

Anyway, to my F.E.A.R. readers, I promise that the character is not who you probably thought of when you saw the name. I assure you that the name is just a coincidence. Granted, they have a similar friendship with the main character but beyond that, trust me, they are not the same character. I am not that lazy xD. In my defense, there are only a few cool sounding Greek letters and most of them are already overused in other stories.

Speaking of which, any similarities to characters with the same name in other stories is purely just a coincidence.

I hope a "wingman" doesn't ruin the story for the people that have taken the time to read my story so far. It is just the kind of stuff that I like to write. I put off posting this new chapter for several days because I was worried that it might ruin the story for some people. I hope it doesn't. The story will still be dark :)

Read and review if you want.

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As I stood, Sinclair said, "Take a breath, son. You did it. Now, just let her ride on your shoulders and she'll trust you like her own Daddy." I briefly wondered how much of the fight he had witnessed because he seemed rather calm for what I had just done. Either he had missed the part where I had eviscerated the Bouncer, or he was even more of a sociopath than I had originally thought.

I looked down at Eleanor, who remarked teasingly as she raised her free left hand up towards me, "I'm telling the other girls that I have the best daddy." Laughing sarcastically with my repeated grunts, I reached down with my gauntlet-encased left hand. I gently grasped her underneath her right shoulder and began to lift her up. As she passed in front of my eye, she smiled brightly with her yellow eyes glowing brightly with joy as she gently touched the surface of my segmented eye with her small, pale left hand.

After I had raised her close enough, she clamored over my armored head and down onto her little throne, or what was left of it after the Bouncer had crushed me against the wall. A few moments later, I heard her tap on the top of my head to indicate that she was ready. As I turned to face back towards the exit, Sinclair said, "We're in business. Now, there are corpses all over Rapture, and Lil' Dimples there can sniff out the ADAM on 'em. Find one."

My radio deactivated. I mentally fumed about how incompetent my allies seemed to think I was. Just because I let some asshole get the drop on me with the Hypnotize plasmid, that did not mean that I was incompetent. Seconds later, the Eleanor-controlled Little Sister chirped, "Mr. Bubbles, come on!" I smiled beneath my armored face and began to make my way out of the restaurant. As I did, I stopped at the Circus of Values vending machine behind the bar to restock my supplies. Afterwards, I began to leave the room.

However, as I reached the ornate bulkhead, the intercom system activated. Sofia preached, "Ryan was wrong. To hand sufficient power to any individual is to create a tyrant. We must therefore eradicate tyranny at the genetic level. To end sin itself. That is the family. That is our cause." I mentally snorted. Clearly, she had lost her mind. To remove the instinct for survival, which, ultimately, she would have to do, was to make the human being lamer than a horse with a broken leg.

Knowing my thoughts, Eleanor remarked, "Mother has become the very thing that she despises and she is so deluded that she doesn't even realize it." I grunted in response. As I walked down the steps outside the lounge, I heard a woman muttering to herself at the other end of the walkway. I could feel Eleanor's growing excitement as I drew closer with my upgraded drill and Electro Bolt plasmid at the ready.

I had entered the walkway when a woman dressed in torn formal attire and wearing a fancy mascaraed ball bunny mask with a broken right ear walked from the left side area out into the open. She swung her golf club, dragging the metal tip along the tiled floor in the down swing, as she muttered to herself. Somehow remaining oblivious to me, she turned to walk through the nearby open bulkhead.

I willed a blast of Electro Bolt into her. As she convulsed while blue electrical arcs surrounded her disfigured form, I swung my drill's sharp point into the back of her skull. The blow cracked open her head and the women flew forward through the open doorway. There, she collapsed into a heap on the floor. Meanwhile, Eleanor chirped, "Let's dance with them daddy!"

I laughed with repeated grunts at her playfulness and continued onwards. Moving past the dead Splicer, I returned to the crossroads of the amusement park. As we neared the lit sign above the left-hand side path that read, "Gift Shop", Eleanor asked politely, "Oh, can we go there daddy?" I gave off a quizzical grunt. She replied, "Pretty please, daddy? I've been a good girl. Promise."

I mentally sighed and then made my way towards the gift shop. Due to the silence of the cavernous-like area, my every bootfall thundered through the space. I entered the gift shop to find one of Ryan's old security guards standing inside the store. He was wielding a revolver and was facing my direction. As I approached, he yelled, "You're kind ain't welcome here!" Ignoring the deranged man, I continued forward.

He panicked and began to retreat further into the store as he yelled, "Help! Make him listen!" I mentally sighed as I chased after him as he ran towards the checkout counter of the upper floor. Why did these fools think that they were a match for me? Unless there were swarms of them, they had little chance against something like me.

I had been purpose-built for one thing and one thing only: to kill, to protect my little girl with my life against genetically modified supermen and women. These people should have been fleeing from me. Sofia must have riled them up even better than I wanted to believe her capable of doing. I began to wonder if the rumor about Ryan Industries installing pumps in the ventilation networks to release pheromones that would allow him to control the citizens of Rapture was true.

There was no way that was true. Ryan may have been an egotistical monster, but he believed in freewill. In fact, it was the cornerstone of Rapture. Surely, he would have never betrayed his own beliefs by removing the people's freewill. Big Daddies and Little Sisters were one thing. Our existence was the result of the brutal reality that came along with the plasmid industry. Betraying your own cornerstone belief was something else entirely. I shivered slightly as the full extent of the Hell that Rapture had been through hit me.

I may have hated Ryan at one time, but I idolized the man in a way. Self-built industrialist, ironclad will, extremely intelligent, and charismatic enough to convince people that Rapture was possible, Andrew Ryan was a true god among men. However, for all of his strengths, Ryan was a walking loudspeaker for Social Darwinism and Capitalism. He believed that by the force of his or her will, anyone could achieve greatness. He viewed beggars and the impoverished as lazy individuals that could pull themselves out of their situations.

Individuals like Sofia Lamb and Frank Fontaine were able to capitalize on Ryan's attitude towards the less fortunate and the city had begun to turn on its once beloved founder. Still, I refused to believe that things had disintegrated to the point that he had betrayed his own belief in freewill. The man had an army of Big Daddies and, following his seizure of Fontaine Futuristics, had the market cornered on plasmids and tonics. Plus, he had that little clubhouse of his up in Hephaestus. The events that led to someone managing to kill him was one story that I was dying to hear.

As I reached the top of the short flight of steps in pursuit of the Leadhead Splicer, I came face to face with two other individuals. One, a woman wielding a revolver, was past the checkout counter over in front of the large panes of glass that allowed someone to look at the surrounding city to my left. The second, a man concealing his face with a welding mask and wielding a section of pipe, was behind the counter directly in front of me. The original Splicer had retreated back past the counter and towards the toys inside the little side area behind the checkout counter.

Upon seeing me, the other two individuals screamed. Then, the woman began to fire upon me with her revolver. I growled as the small caliber rounds hit my form. Eleanor screamed with terror in her voice, "Unzip 'em daddy!" Burning fury filled me and I let out a loud roar that vibrated the air. Red light illuminated the section of the counter that I was facing as my roar continued to rock the air of the small shop.

The individuals briefly hesitated as fright entered their body expressions. The woman even covered her ears as I finished my enraged roar. Stomping towards the male Leadhead Splicer, I teased the throttle of my drill in anticipation of my assault on the cowardly individual that was not man enough to face me without his disgusting friends. Ignoring the pain as he fired his haphazardly repaired revolver point blank into my armored bulk, I grabbed him by the neck with my left hand. He gasped for breath and comically grabbed my wrist with his left hand in a pathetic attempt to force me to release my grip. I lifted him up into the air and he pressed the muzzle of his revolver against the glass surface of the middle segment of my eye.

A click was the weapon's only response when he pulled the trigger. Hearing the Thuggish Splicer about to swing his pipe at me, he apparently felt the need to announce his actions verbally, I turned to face him. I used the former security guard in my grasp like a shield. When the other man swung his pipe, he only succeeded in hitting his friend in the back. I revved up my drill and, with the industrial grade tool's motor whirling at full throttle, I sent it through the chest of the man.

The sound of crunching bone filled the air as blood flew out of the man and onto the exterior of the copper chest plate, that was the lower part of my head, that was the majority of my torso. As my drill's whirling point exited the back of the screaming former security guard, it penetrated into the man behind him. I heard the Splicer drop his pipe and ripped my drill back through the first man. Tossing the corpse off to the left, I moved towards the Thuggish Splicer.

The bloodied man was attempting to retrieve his pipe section. I finished him off with a swing of my drill. The body collapsed onto the floor and I trampled it as I stomped towards the final Splicer. The disfigured woman fired her revolver but the rounds ricocheted off my copper face. As I closed in, she attempted to reload her sidearm. However, her hands were shaking so uncontrollably that she was unable to reload before I sent an uppercut into the bottom of her chin.

The instant that she gave off a gurgling death rattle, the maddening rage returned to the back of my mind. Eleanor chirped happily, "Daddy is so brave." I smiled slightly beneath my face and returned to the toys. For the first time, I noticed the ghostly sound of a woman singing though I was unable to identify which song it was.

Unfortunately, to my daughter's dismay, the toy racks and bargain bins were mostly empty. Only a few plain plush dolls and metal submarine toys were left. There were several boxes full of teddy bears in the very back of the selection area around a combination safe. As I ripped the safe's swinging door off its hinges, I heard my companion say sorrowfully, "Aw, not even any parts. I want to build another dolly...Mother took mine away so I would forget you."

Kneeling, I rummaged through the safe's contents for useful items. I located around eighty dollars in a money clip though that was the only useful item inside the safe. However, as I began to retract my hand, I saw a baseball inside an airtight clear cube. I was confused as to why it was inside the safe but nonetheless crushed the container in my palm and retrieved the pristine white ball from the safe.

While I was rotating the ball in the palm of my gauntlet-encased left hand, I realized why the owner of the store had bothered to lock up the otherwise worthless piece of sports equipment. On the ball were the signatures of Andrew Ryan, Frank Fontaine, and Sofia Lamb. I immediately questioned the authenticity of Sofia's signature. The titans of industry would likely sign anything if it got their name out there but the altruist shrink believed that names only further isolated individuals from each other so she only used her name as a formality.

Shrugging, I lifted the ball up towards my daughter. She cried out in excitement when she saw the object and eagerly took it from my grasp. Wanting to investigate the rest of the shop, I turned and made my way to the back of the store. I descended the short flight of steps to the right of the checkout counter and, upon reaching the bottom, I turned to the right and found the flight of stairs that led down to the restrooms. When I reached the bottom floor, I saw a newspaper vending machine against the wall next to two red payphones that were occasionally illuminated by a flickering light fixture mounted on the wall. On the wall in front of me, I saw faded advertisements for a clothing sale and Pink Elephant Whiskey. Meanwhile, the way into the women's restroom was blocked by a shorted out hinged metal gate.

As I walked towards the shorted out gate, I heard a woman crying hysterically somewhere in the men's restroom. I turned and waited for the Splicer to exit the restroom. After about a minute, no one had appeared. Eleanor called out, "Hello?" When there was not a response, I cautiously proceeded into the restroom. I turned left when I neared the wall-mounted advertisement for a Blasich Cigars Ad, though for the first time, I noticed that the child in the ad had roughly half of his face severely burned.

The interior of the restroom was dark and foreboding. The only light source other than the light coming in from the hallway was the sparking electrical cables descending from an open section of ceiling in the far back corner that looked suspiciously like a Splicer's escape route. I also noticed that the closest bathroom stall was conveniently closed as if there was someone inside of it. As if the stereotype for places that you would be ambushed in was not complete, there was a noticeable cloud of smoke wafting through the room just above the floor in a way that resembled fog.

Eleanor asked, "We aren't going to fall for this are we?" I grunted as I moved forward towards the hole in ceiling. As I reached the spot, which had a huge pile of debris in the shape of a mound beneath it, I heard a toilet flush. Realizing that the Splicer had been inside the stall, I wheeled around with my drill at the ready.

However, to my confusion, the only sight that greeted me was an empty restroom. The stall door was now open but there were not any signs of the former occupant. That was impossible. Even Houdini Splicers made a noise when they used their Teleportation Plasmid. How had the Splicer managed to get away so fast and so silently?

I made my way to the stall to investigate. On the chipped white tile wall just before the stall was a Hop Up Cola Ad. The happy white bunny drawn on the ad was completely out of place in the dimly lit room that had the faint stench of death hovering in the air. As I stood in the threshold of the door, I noticed that my shadow on the wall was joined by another. Eleanor whined as the woman moved close behind us. Her cries of fear sent a jolt of rage through me. I let off an animalistic guttural roar while red light appeared on the tiled wall as the golden yellow light emitting from my eye changed to its hellish red.

When I turned around to eliminate the threat to my charge, I was struck across my armored face with a golf club. Sparks flew as the metal end of the makeshift weapon struck the copper surface of my head. The disfigured denizen tried to swing back in the opposite direction to hit me a second time. However, I caught the club with my left hand just below the union of the, now bent, rusted tip and the shaft. Then, I snatched the comically useless weapon from her grasp.

I quickly rotated the golf club so that the tip was pointed to the left and then, with one mighty swing, I buried it into the side of the Splicer's skull. The force of the impact snapped the shaft and I was left holding about half of it. The other half remained with the tip. With a squirt of blood gushing out of the wound, the corpse fell backwards onto the dirty floor. With calmness once again restored inside my mind, I exited the restroom.

However, I had no sooner reached the exit before I heard several Splicers yelling in the gift shop. They must have heard the commotion and entered the shop as a group to kill me in order to appease Sofia. Normally, I would have proceeded up the stairs to neutralize them. However, I stopped as I sensed that something was wrong. Eleanor became as quiet as she could as she sensed my alarm through our bond. Together, we listened to the unfolding situation upstairs in the shop.

The Splicers were yelling at each other, but it was a mixture of berating each other and general stress-induced vocalizations of vulgarity. One of them, a man that had an air of superiority in his tone, yelled, "You stupid fucking clods! I told you to watch our ass! How the fuck do you miss a Metal Daddy? Fucking useless! All of you!"

A woman yelled back, "Lamb said that he would have a mark!"

Another man, this one having less confidence in his voice, muttered, "We shouldn't have left Saunders and Christie out there..."

The first man snapped, "Survival of the fucking fittest! Maybe if you had been watching the entrance like you should have been, a Metal Daddy wouldn't be about to come and bust your skull!"

A different woman, though this one sounded much younger than the first, remarked, "Hey! Leave him alone asshole! You know he hasn't had any ADAM in nearly a month..."

The first man snapped, "Laddy-fucking-da! I am about to be a Metal Daddy's Betty because of you lazy shits!"

At that moment, I heard the security door for the gift shop open. The Splicers screamed as they fired their small arms. A myriad of different emotions and thoughts raced through my mind. A Metal Daddy? I had not anticipated another Mass Production Model to lumber his way into the area for at least another half hour. In its current state, Ryan Amusements would not be a "high traffic" area for the gather/protector pairs.

Contrary to what the average individual might think, protectors were not sent out from Point Prometheus and Hephaestus thoughtlessly. The Protector Program was built, organized, and operated just like a business. That should not be any surprise. After all, it was Rapture. There were standardized schedules and streamlined procedures.

However, while I had intimate knowledge of the schedule for my kind, I only had a general understanding of the schedule for the big, smelly, brutes. As different lines of research and development, we were not privy to each others daily schedules and, at least on my kind's part, we did not care enough to want to know anything about the tin men other than how to kill them proficiently should a Splicer turn one against us.

The reason for the meticulous schedule was that Big Daddies were expensive in terms of resources and time to build. The original Mass Production Models were never intended to be protectors so very little, if any, thought was given to mitigating the cost of their construction. After all, they were the poor souls that were intended to maintain Rapture's infrastructure. Meanwhile, my kind was purposely engineered and manufactured for the express purpose of being protectors for the gatherers.

When Dr. Alexander saw Subject Zeta crying in front of the Gather's Garden Vending Machine in the main building of Fontaine Futuristics, he was so disturbed by the sight that he almost instantly pulled the plug on our program. Due to our limited number of only approximately fifteen to seventeen active protectors at any given time and our "impracticality", new protectors were needed. The lumbering mindless drones were experimented on and eventually, the exact details were never revealed to the public or to us, they were turned into protectors.

However, they were expensive and their gear was nonrenewable due to the grafting process. The cobbled together appearance of the new model that I had seen outside the resort indicated that the new wardens of Rapture were running out of parts to build their Big Daddies. Moreover, the Bouncer that I had just killed looked much older than that new Big Daddy. Perhaps, he had been built before the Civil War and his suit had decayed. I began to suspect that Sofia's "Family" had completely run out of traditional Big Daddy suits and were relying upon the surviving Mass Production Big Daddies built during my time.

A loud, guttural roar tore me away from my thoughts as it suddenly rocked the air of the gift shop. The roar struck a chord inside of me. There was no mistaking that noise. Only one creature in all of Rapture made that sound: an Alpha Series Big Daddy. The call had gone out and I answered it. Letting out my own guttural roar, I thundered my way up the stairs to assist my brother. Unlike our iconic counterparts, we did not leave each other to fend for himself. Whenever possible, we assisted each other.

Upon reaching the gift shop, I saw six Splicers. Two were the women that I had heard earlier and four were men. The two women were both Leadhead Splicers and taking cover behind the checkout counter on the left platform section of the room while only two of the men were wielding revolvers and were taking cover behind the railing of the much smaller right platform. Meanwhile, the other two men, who were both wearing torn dockworkers' attire and wielding lead pipes, were rushing down the zigzag path in the center of the room between the two platforms towards an Alpha Series Big Daddy that appeared to have just entered the shop because the bulkhead was still raised up.

The sight of my brother filled me with indescribable relief. There was another Alpha Series! I knew that there had to be at least one! His suit was nearly identical to mine with its rivet-covered copper helmet with a glowing golden yellow segmented eye, dark blue canvas skin with brown leather armor, weighted diving belt and boots as well as the weight hanging down from his helmet by two coils of rope, diving knife secured to his left hip at a slight angle to allow ease of access, electric blue EVE-filled tube running down the interior of his left arm, metal mounts for a drill running down the exterior of his right arm, and gauntlet encased left hand. Even his left glove had the white numbers, "OO1" on its wrist strap.

However, unlike mine, his suit was slightly weathered from age but his suit otherwise still had a fairly pristine appearance. Moreover, in his right hand's vice-like grip and mounted to his right arm was a noticeably repaired Prototype Rivet Gun. I saw the tip of a Big Sister's needle-like weapon sticking out of the weapon and I realized that it was the same one that I had seen in the Security Wing. My brother must have taken the machine gun, located parts for his favored weapon, and then returned to repair it. I could see that he had replaced the air tank and the nozzle. Moreover, the nozzle was now modified to be a high-pressure nozzle in order to increase the weapon's damage output.

In the low light of the shop, I was unable to identify my brother. Eleanor informed me through our bond, "That's him, Father! He is the one that gathered enough ADAM for Tenenbaum to help me revive you." Meanwhile, my brother had dropped the two Thuggish Splicers with headshots and had attempted to engage the men on the right platform. The four Leadhead Splicers fired their sidearms at my unknown brother. The soft-nosed .38 caliber rounds ricocheted off his armored head, flying off to impact the walls and nearby miscellaneous items in the shop.

The cowardly Splicers were working in tandem. When my brother would fire his Rivet Gun at one of them, the others would emerge from cover and fire their revolvers. However, having heard my roar and thundering boot falls, the two women turned and began to fire upon me as the older one that was clad in torn, moldy, socialite attire screamed in panic, "Animal!" I growled in pain as the rounds impacted my form and began to move towards them with my drill at the ready and my left hand surrounded by blue electrical arcs.

As I stomped towards them, Eleanor yelled with a trace of anger in her otherwise robotic sounding Little Sister voice, "Nobody hurts MY Daddy!" The two deranged women stood as I reached them. The nearest one tried to club me with the grip of her revolver but I electrocuted her with a blast of Electro Bolt and then followed up with a swing of my modified drill. The razor sharp tip of my industrial grade tool gouged out the right side of her skull as I struck her across her face. When the corpse fell backwards onto the tiled floor, and thus getting in my way, I unceremoniously trampled it as I chased after the fleeing second Splicer.

When the fleeing woman circled around the back of the counter and began to sprint towards the exit, as my brother had moved towards the two men, I used Telekinesis to levitate the nearby cash register and then launched into the back of her lumpy head. One of the sharp corners of the metal object made contact with the Splicer's skull with a sickening wet crack. She cried out in both shock and agony as she fell down the flight of steps to the regular level of the shop.

I rushed after her and, upon reaching the bleeding denizen, who was trying to get up, I placed my armored left foot on her lower back and forced her back down. As she cried out in fear, I revved up my drill. The room was filled with the rumbling mechanical roar of my drill's motor as I thrust the whirling tip into the back of the already cracked open skull. Seconds later, it was all over. I ripped my drill's tip out of the corpse while I removed myself from the top of its back.

Powering down my drill, I looked around to see my brother moving towards me from where he appeared to have been purchasing more rivets from the El Ammo Bandito Vending Machine in front of the other platform. I waited until he reached me before I let out a grunt. Our voice boxes had been surgically modified, but my kind had created a language out of the sounds that we could still make. Hence, we could communicate audibly with grunts that sounded simple to an observer but, in reality, could convey many different words or phrases that changed with subtle variations in tone.

Hence, I had asked, "Alpha?"

My brother raised his left hand up in front of his head in a salute as he replied with a grunt, "Subject Alpha, at your service, sir." Then, he dropped his salute and extended his hand towards me as he finished, "It's good to see you again, Delta."

I smiled beneath my copper face before I shook my old friend's hand firmly as I grunted, "Likewise, my friend." As we released our grip on each others hand, I asked, "Where's Emily?" Emily was Alpha's charge. All the Little Sisters were close, but Eleanor and Emily were particularly close, even going so far as to remember the name of the others protector. Hence, I was called, "Papa Delta" by Emily and, respectively, Eleanor called Alpha, "Papa Alpha".

My friend replied, "She's alive somewhere...she's one of the Big Sisters now."

Curious, I asked, "How do you know that?"

He raised his Rivet Gun up so that I would see the broken tip of a Big Sister's weapon and explained, "She was the one that Sofia sent after me. She must have recognized me because she let me go."

The Eleanor-controlled Little Sister said over the top of my head, "Hi, Papa Alpha. I am sorry that I did not recognize you without your symbol. I should have known that you were the one that Tenenbaum reactivated. Other than Father, only you could have pulled off gathering so much ADAM...especially those sessions in Persephone right under Mother's nose. Don't worry about Emily, Alpha. Mother has her here with me. After she disobeyed her order to kill you, Mother locked her in the quarantine chamber with me until she agrees to follow the order. She says hi, that she is sorry that she attacked you, and that she wants you to come with us to the surface."

Alpha looked at my temporary charge for a moment in silence before he let out a laugh similar to mine. Then, he let out a grunt as he curtsied for Eleanor to mimic a stereotypical "knight". She giggled in response. Then, he grunted, "It appears that we have the same objective, sir. Think a joint op is in order? Granted, my programming has not been working right ever since they turned my daughter into a Big Sister so I do not have an Aggression Response anymore, but my aim is still proficiently pinpoint, and my mind remains my own."

I smiled beneath my face before I slapped his right shoulder with the palm of my gauntlet-encased left hand as I grunted, "I wouldn't have it any other way, my old friend. Come on, we need to gather enough ADAM for Incinerate in order to get out of this shithole."

He asked, "Couldn't we just leave through the airlock?"

I groaned before I explained, "I have to babysit Sinclair so he will guide me to Fontaine Futuristics."

My brother grunted with noticeable bitterness, "Sinclair? The man that sold us out? Why don't we just leave him to rot like he did to us?"

I smirked before I explained, "Because he needs us."

Alpha was silent for a moment before he remarked, "Does he now? Interesting...I forgot how manipulative you could be, sir. I'll play along then."

Eleanor giggled and then said, "Two Daddies? This is funny. I'm Daddy. No, I'm Daddy." I laughed with my repeated grunts briefly, but we had a job to do, so I grunted at her. I heard her sniff the air before she said, "ADAM is near...go back to the crosswalk, Father." Eagerly following my beautiful master's orders, I moved towards the main room. Subject Alpha moved beside me on my left with his Prototype Rivet Gun at the ready and I noticed that he also had his left hand up with a miasma around his ported digits.

As we entered the main room, I noticed signs of Alpha's recent fight with Sofia's hit squad. A female Splicer's corpse was lying prostrate in front of the ornate nearby column on our left. When we moved close enough, I observed the bloody wound with an industrial grade rivet imbedded in its center on the back of her deformed head where the brainstem had once connected to her skull. Upon seeing me observing the corpse, Alpha commented, "Just like you always reminded us, sir: sever the brainstem and they are dead before they hit the floor."

As we moved further across the "bridge" towards the entrance to the Hall of the Future, Eleanor suddenly cried out, "Down there, Father." Seeing a missing section of railing, I moved towards it to look down. Upon nearing it, I noticed several bloody footprints on the tiled floor. I reached the opening and peered down to see the corpse of a male Thuggish Splicer.

The body was lying prostrate in a pool of blood just before the entrance to the propaganda machine called Journey to the Surface. A few inches away from the body was a rusted red pipe wrench that I assumed to be the former denizen's weapon. The two sections of railing were lying on either side of the corpse and the body itself was on top of several pieces of rubble. To the left of the body was a barrel that had oil seeping out of it and a large, tall, flat shipping crate.

The clubfooted corpse was the "angel", as indicated by the subtle glowing of the body due to my bond with Eleanor and the new Little Sister. Not bothering to take the stairs, I stepped over the side of the opening. I landed hard on the tiled floor, making a loud crashing sound and cracking the section of tile beneath my feet. My brother landed beside me, making an equally thunderous noise. I turned to face the body and my built-in radio activated. Sinclair addressed me with his southern accented voice, "She's got a juicy one! But when she starts drainin' out the ADAM, the Splicers will come runnin'. Be ready before you set her down on that body."

As my radio deactivated, Alpha commented, "So, they treat you like the most incompetent Big Daddy in all of Rapture too huh?" I groaned in response. In preparation for the gathering session, we moved to place traps and hack any nearby machine that could help the Splicers.

Alpha placed a row of trap rivets on the edge of the opening in the railing and then a vertical row of them at the top of the flight of stairs that was closest to the body. Meanwhile, I rewired the health station located on the opposite side of the support wall for the bridge to be a trap for any Splicer that tried to use it to heal themselves. We did not have to worry about the staircase on the opposite side of the bottom floor since the majority of the Splicers would take the most obvious routes and the few that did use the staircase would easily be dealt with.

As a precaution, I also moved the barrel away from where it was in case one of the Splicers had a sudden shot of coherent thought and used it against us. I placed it in front of the Circus of Values and El Ammo Bandito Vending Machines, which were against the nearby support wall on our side. It would serve as an "ace in the hole" should the Splicers overwhelm our position.

Then, with Subject Alpha taking position further back near the locked bulkhead leading to the ride to provide covering fire with his Rivet Gun, I moved to stand next to the body. I knelled enough for Eleanor to hop down onto the tiled floor safely. After I sensed that she had lowered herself down to the ground, I stood back up and then looked down at her as she happily pointed at the body before her.

She said something as well, but my radio activated and Sofia preached at me loud enough to overpower my charge's voice, "That is a child of the Family, not a toy for you to exploit and discard. It is fitting that you expire here – one more forgotten curio in Ryan's shrine to the self."

By then, Eleanor had started to gather the ADAM inside the corpse. The sick suction noise filled the air as she repeatedly thrust the comically oversized needle into the body before pulling the trigger of her gathering tool. Sinclair advised me, "Here they come! Keep the Splicers off her now 'til she finishes or they'll never give up the hunt!"

The air was filled with the yells of the incoming deranged members of Sofia's flock as they descended upon our position like a pack of ravenous wolves. I submitted to my Protector Instincts and razor sharp focus returned to my mind. Meanwhile, I began to emit a rumbling, threatening roar as my eye began to emit hellish red light in an attempt to warn any would-be predator to steer clear of my charge.

In the early days, our mere appearance and cries were enough to frighten away any potential threats to our daughters. In fact, it was very rare for an actual incident to occur for several weeks after the official commissioning of our program. It almost became a running joke amongst us that there were so few incidents.

However, that all changed as the pressures of social unrest and ADAM addiction began to take hold in the public. Political Revolution, they said. Rising up against "the tyrant", they said. As Fontaine once said, "Give me a smart mark over a dumb one every time." Yes, Rapture did indeed go to proverbial Hell.

Except in the finest areas of Rapture, Splicers would come out of the woodwork by the dozens whenever we gathered. I could still smell the nauseating stench of blood iron and could still hear the maniacal laughter and agonized screams as clear as I could sense my new surroundings. They just would not stop charging at me even as piles of them would appear at my feet. Why would they not stop? That was all I wanted: for them to stop so that Eleanor was safe and I did not have to kill yet another individual.

If it had not been for the numbing effect of my Protector Instincts and Eleanor's calming presence, I would have had a psychological breakdown from the memories of the carnage that I had caused. It was not losing their bonded daughter that caused some of my brethren to become emotionally unstable wrecks. Some of them just could not live with knowing what they had done and, more specifically, what they had become: a heartless monster that could kill another human being and feel nothing for doing it. After that, they were like zombies as they mindlessly protected their charges and they usually did not last through another gathering session.

Of course, that all suddenly ceased around Christmastime. The public, even Ryan himself, may have been fooled into having a false sense of security as the unrest ceased, but we were not fooled. We knew what was coming. The New Year's Eve Riots confirmed our suspicions, though I had failed to witness the ensuing descent of Rapture into near self-destruction.

A woman wearing a dirty white formal dress, concealing her face with a dirty bridal veil, and wielding a golf club rushed at me from the left side of the support column seconds later. The onslaught had officially commenced. Physically shielding my master by standing directly between her and the incoming Splicers while still allotting Alpha clear avenues of fire on either side of me, I steeled myself to protect her with my life. I was not useless! I may have been an old man, but I could still kill anything that dared to threaten my beautiful master!

As the woman neared me, I electrocuted her with a blast of Electro Bolt and then bashed her across her face with my drill. The usual stream of blood, flash, and bone fragments exited the side of the Splicer's cracked skull as the classic combo neutralized her. Her body was crumbling to the ground just as three more Thuggish Splicers, all three of them being clad in moldy security guard attire and wielding batons, rushed towards us from around the same side of the wall. Meanwhile, a hideously deformed lone Thuggish Splicer rushed around the right side of the wall wielding a red pipe wrench as he screamed, "You ain't her real Dad!"

The high-pitched report of Alpha's modified Prototype Rivet Gun filled the air as he took aim at the incoming group. My brother was not exaggerating about the retention of his skills. We used to call him "The Typewriter" because of his prowess with his weapon of choice. Any concerns that I had had moments prior were silenced as he dropped each Splicer with a clean headshot as he three fired standard rivets in rapid succession.

As the lone Splicer neared me, he cried out as he lunged towards me in a full body swing of his wrench. I quickly knelled and, as the man missed me and lost his balance, I reached forward and grabbed his less mutated right leg with my gloved left hand. Standing back up, I flipped him over my left shoulder. He landed hard next to Eleanor, who was drinking from her needle's baby bottle reservoir. The man cried out in confusion as he struggled to catch his breath and get to his feet.

Meanwhile, I noticed that Eleanor was unusually calm as she continued to gather despite the fact that a wheezing Splicer was lying mere inches away from her. Before he could recover, I stomped down on the top of his skull with my heavy, armored right foot. A sick crunching sound filled the air as I succeeded in crushing the man's skull. Meanwhile, I heard Alpha firing his Rivet Gun and, when I turned back to look towards the support wall, I saw two new bodies on the ground just beyond the left path with a single rivet in their heads.

Eleanor assured us as she continued to thrust her tool into the body and extract the ADAM, "Soon Daddy, soon." I heard the Trap Rivets on the upper floor fire and then heard the death rattles of several Splicers. Seconds later, two more former security guards in moldy, mud-covered trench coats rushed towards me with batons in their right hands. Meanwhile, behind me, I heard the distinct sound of cutting torches burning their way through the security bulkhead.

I willed a blast of Electro Bolt into the first guard. As the denizen convulsed while electric arcs danced around his, I shattered the front of the man's skull with a swing of my drill. Blood and bone fragments erupted out of the Splicer's face as his corpse fell backwards onto the tiled floor. The other guard shoved the falling body out of his way as he continued to rush at me with his baton raised above his head.

When he reached me, I sent the hardened tip of my drill into his left kneecap. The resulting wet popping sound indicated that my strike had shattered his knee. The former park employee cried out in agony as he collapsed onto his hands and knees before me. Growling, I raised my drill up above my head with its tip pointed downwards and then thrust it straight down into the top of the struggling Splicer's skull. The tip of my heavy-duty tool easily penetrated straight through his skull and exited out through the Splicer's nasal cavity.

Fearing that more Splicers were about to rush at us, I stomped down on the corpse just below the neck and unceremoniously ripped my bloodied weapon free from the former Splicer's skull. After moving to stand in front of my charge once again, I strained my senses to detect new Splicer arrivals. Moments passed but none appeared. The only perceivable threat was the new arrivals cutting their way through the ornate bulkhead behind us.

Shifting our attention, we turned and focused on the rapidly failing watertight bulkhead. The three independent balls of sparks were quickly moving to the edges of the door. As the sparks approached the edges, we tightened our grip on our respective weapon. Suddenly, Eleanor announced with a happy tone, "Tada! Come on, Daddy!" No more than a second later, the bulkhead exploded outwards. We both roared in agony as hot metal shrapnel peppered our enormous bulks.

Two male Leadhead Splicers emerged from the smoke and fired their haphazardly repaired revolvers at us. Unfortunately, for them, the smoke prevented them from accurately firing their small caliber sidearms and Alpha quickly silenced them both with headshots. We both looked at each other and exchanged a silent acknowledgement of gratitude for the others assistance.

Returning to my temporary charge, I noticed that all of the bodies had a blue butterfly pinned to their attire like a badge. I had seen similar butterflies scribbled on walls in reference to Sofia's "Family". Why a butterfly? Clearly, it stood for something but I was unable to infer what it was. Perhaps, I would uncover the meaning during my quest to reach my daughter. By then, I had reached my blue and white dressed charge.

Eleanor smiled up at me as she injected the needle of her tool into my upper left thigh. As she injected my share of the ADAM, I felt the familiar feelings of euphoria and energy. It felt molten hot as it coursed through my veins, which caused me to shutter slightly. My ADAM-starved body eagerly welcomed the substance as if it was food, which, for Alpha Series Big Daddies and presumably Big Sisters, it actually was as a consequence of the massive amount of ADAM that was required to splice our bodies into the walking juggernauts that we had to be. Just a little more and I would have enough to purchase the basic form of Incinerate. Eleanor retracted her needle and turned towards my old friend.

However, he waved his left hand and then grunted with gratitude in his tone, "I have enough to hold me over until your father can purchase Incinerate, Miss Eleanor. Tenenbaum allotted me some of the ADAM that I helped her collect."

The Eleanor-controlled Little Sister nodded and then looked up at me. I noticed that golden yellow light illuminated her deathly pale skin. My eye must have returned to emitting its standard color. Raising her left hand towards me, she teased me, "Are we going to be together again, Daddy?" I smiled beneath my armored face as I lowered myself down to a kneeling position. Eleanor giggled and then climbed up onto her throne.

As she did, my built-in radio activated. Seconds later, Sinclair addressed me, "Now you know the stakes, son. But a plasmid costs a bit more ADAM yet. Keep it up. I see you have made a friend too. The more the merrier, I say."

I heard Eleanor sniff the air. However, she began to whine with fear. I gave off a quizzical grunt. She explained with her robotic sounding voice, "We have to go through the scary place to get to the angel." Her innocence struck me in my heart. Even after all this time, she was still afraid of the Journey to the Surface ride. I assured her with the gentlest voice that I could rumble through my surgically modified voice box that we would protect her.

Subject Alpha grunted a similar assurance and she finally agreed to be taken through the propaganda machine. After replenishing our supplies at the nearby vending machines, we began to proceed towards the opening that led to the entrance of the ride. As we did, my companion quickly asked, "Sir, just curious: how did you know it was me even though my mark has been removed?"

I smirked beneath my face before I replied, "Because only you would have chosen that repaired pea shooter over a .50 caliber machine gun, Alpha."

He retorted, "Only you would have chosen that barbaric contraption of metal over an actual weapon, sir."

I laughed with my repeated grunts before I replied, "To each his own, my friend." By then, we had reached the opened bulkhead and proceeded into the ride.