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.

15. Chapter 15:Meeting of the Apex Predators

Ch. 15: Meeting of the Apex Predators

A.N.:

Sorry everyone!

I had this chapter done a while ago but then I thought that I had was too close to what happens in the game. Since the majority of you have probably played through BioShock 2 many times over, I don't want to insult you by having a walkthrough. For those that have not played through the game, I do not want to ruin it for you.

So, I rewrote the majority of this chapter to throw in some surprises :)

In this chapter, Subject Delta is introduced to an enemy that is even more deadly than a Big Sister.

Anyway,

Sorry again! Now that midterms and Spring Break are over, I can get back on the "two week" update schedule so that I can alternate between my F.E.A.R. story and this one ^^

Also, I cannot thank everyone enough for the support that you have given this story! Really, I don't know what to say other than thank you.

Read and review if you want :)

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As I moved up the stairs, I inexplicably allowed myself to fantasize about what kind of life would be awaiting us on the surface. In truth, it had not been the paradise that I feared Eleanor believed it to be. The power vacuum left by the Axis Powers had been filled by arguably a much greater threat to personal freedom and "democracy" than Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito ever could have been.

Joseph Stalin. Even the name was enough to send a shiver down my spine. I had met the man in person once shortly after the war. I saw that look in his eyes. I had seen the same look in Andrew Ryan's eyes years later. Dead just as a shark's eyes. Not broken like the eyes of the poor husks in Persephone. No, there was iron will and intelligence in his eyes but they were so devoid of warmth and compassion that the stories about the man suddenly did not at all surprise me. I knew then why it was said that Stalin was the only man that Hitler ever feared.

In a way, Hitler and Stalin were Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. Both were so committed to their own self-interested goals that they were willing to sacrifice everyone else around them in order to accomplish said goals. Stalin had been so ruthless in the war that it had in fact been a woman that had hoisted the Communist flag over the Reichstag; not a man. The Soviets later staged the whole thing to save face. Stalin had sacrificed so many of his people in the so called "mass attacks" that the Soviet Union, after 1943, was scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of people to fight the Nazis.

The world that would await us on the surface was, in some cases, worse than the world of Rapture. The sight of a mushroom cloud was in everyone's mind, the United States and the Soviet Union were at each others throats with cloak and dagger, and the rest of the world was caught in the wake of the two giants. In some ways, I preferred the Soviet Union over my old home, the United States.

In my mind, I heard my beautiful master ask, "Why do you say that, Father?" By then, I had reached the top of the stairs. Before me, I saw a wall with another advertisement for Sofia's practice. At the far left corner of the wall was the entrance to a small office. The name plate above the door said in gold leaf lettering, "R. Flanagan". Inside the office, I heard the psychotic ramblings of a female Splicer.

Moving towards the office, I mentally sighed and then explained, "Eleanor, there is something that you need to know about the people that live on the surface." There were no words that I could tell her to describe what I wanted her to know justice. Instead, I recalled a memory of one of the more unsavory aspects of the surface.

The "snapshot" memory was of a public bathroom located in a city in Georgia in the United States. The clean, white concrete structure was larger than it should have been. Before me, there were two male bathrooms that were side-by-side but never touching despite being in the same building. The open, door-less entrances had a sign next to each one. The one on the left pointed into the open space that was inches away just like the one on the right pointed into its entrance.

By all rights, the two entrances should have been the same. After all, it was just a bathroom. Everyone used it the same way and for the same reason. However, the signs dismissed such ideas of equality. The one on the left had the word "Whites" and the one the right had the word "Colored" beneath their respective arrows.

As I entered the office, I found a small waiting room that was enclosed by a small wall of steel-mesh lined safety glass and grime-covered steel. There was a dirty brown couch against the waiting room wall directly in front of me. Below the couch was the ghostly echo of the former city of Rapture in the form of a discarded, dried-up leather briefcase.

Before I had a chance to react, the bent, rusted head of a golf club impacted the thick copper surface of my face. I turned to see a female Thuggish Splicer clad in a disheveled, torn, mildew yellow dress. Her face was disguised by what remained of a bunny mask. However, I could still make out the lumpy, deformed mass of flesh that had once been the woman's face.

This poor soul had been twisted by more than just ADAM however. I could see the scalpel tracks that had become milky white scars. It looked as though whole sections of her face had been removed as well. I felt nauseous in the seconds that I took in her appearance. This poor woman was a victim of the mad surgeon Dr. Steinman. As I beheld the surgeon's handiwork, I could hear the madman screaming inside my mind, "I want to make them beautiful! But they always turn out wrong!"

The man had become obsessed with aesthetic perfection. Steinman seemed to truly believe that human perfection was a mathematical formula that could be solved through trial and error. Unfortunately, he had taken the "trial and error" part to the extreme, often victimizing citizens without their consent. The man was a surgical genius, I could not deny that. However, he had become obsessed to the point of psychosis. The man had become convinced that the goddess Aphrodite herself was commanding him to create a perfect human being. The combination of ADAM and his own obsession had driven the surgeon absolutely bunko. It would not have surprised me if the lunatic was still up in Medical Pavilion hacking and slicing away at the resident Splicers.

Beyond the female Thuggish Splicer, I saw another woman in similar attire taking cover behind the faded wooden desk that was beyond the waiting room. The deranged woman was wielding a crudely repaired Webley Revolver that had a cracked barrel. I had to hand it to the British, they could make one tough little revolver.

These two women should have felt like the luckiest denizens in Rapture. With a Little Sister not being present, the monster inside of me was more than content with just letting me handle the two Splicers on my own. As the Thuggish Splicer once again swung her golf club, I electrocuted her with a blast of Electro Bolt. As the woman involuntarily shook as electric bolts danced around her deformed frame, I swung my drill into the side of her head.

The Splicer's skull was no match for my brutal strike and my heavy drill succeeded in splitting open the cavity. Letting out a whimper, the woman crumpled to the dirty tiled floor. As her comrade expired on the floor, the Leadhead Splicer rushed forward as she left the relative cover of the desk. Screaming, the deranged woman fired her revolver at me. The .32 caliber rounds seemed less potent now that my health had been increased and my underlying flesh had been reinforced with the Armored Shell Gene Tonic.

Relatively unharmed by the small-caliber rounds, I willed a blast of Electro Bolt from the ported digits of my gauntlet-encased left hand. As the Splicer cried out in confused anger, I stomped forward and then delivered a lethal blow into the side of her skull with my upgraded drill. Whimpering, the denizen flew through the stale air before colliding with the peeling wall to the right of the desk.

There, I noticed another television monitor that, yet again, had an image of an Alpha Series Big Daddy. This one was taken from behind the protector as he lumbered his way into a section of what appeared to be Arcadia, judging by the lush foliage and the wooden-slat framed walls. At the bottom of the photograph, I saw the message "He is near". I could see that the protector was without a ward and also unarmed. The photograph was therefore likely quite old and from before the Civil War.

The familiar feeling of bliss filled my conscious as pink light painted the edges of my vision. Seconds later, Eleanor remarked with a saddened and confused tone, "I…I don't understand, Father. Wh-why are there two different bathrooms? The value of a person is who they are…ri-right?"

I felt a stab of self-loathing as I heard the distress in her enchanting accented voice. It was an ugly truth of humanity that I had exposed her to and I knew that there was no going back for her. I had pulled away the childhood-like veil that her mother and, to some extent, Rapture had put over her eyes and shown her something that was commonplace on the surface.

I replied, "I'm sorry, kid. I want to prepare you for what you are going to encounter up there. On the surface, people are judged not by who they are but by the color of their skin…that is something that you need to understand. It is disgusting, repulsive, nauseating, and completely unjust…but…it is a fact of life."

My daughter was silent for a moment. Then, she asked, "And you…Johnny?"

I shook my head and then remarked, "No...of course not. I hate it. It makes me so mad when I think about it that I can't breathe. I grew up in the southern part of the United States, kid. I was around it every…single…day. Even the so called 'religious leaders' were bigots. 'Keep the coloreds in their place,' they said. 'They are racially inferior,' they said. 'It is God's will for the white man to be in charge,' they said."

I sighed and then said, "I…there was this black girl…lived near where I did. Our parents couldn't have cared less about us…so…we were all each other had. Childhood friends for all purposes…became more when we got older. She was the first girl that I ever loved. We kept it secret…had to…it was illegal back then...didn't care though, I loved her and damn to what people thought. Then, one day junior year of high school, she didn't show at the little meeting place that we had near the creek in the woods. Went looking for her…"

I paused in hesitation. However, my master inquired, "What happened?"

Dutifully, I replied, "…found her hanging from a tree."

Eleanor gasped and then said in an apologetic tone, "Oh god, I'm so sorry, Father. I didn't…"

I smiled sadly before I informed her, "It's alright, kid. I made peace with it a long time ago."

I continued, "People are good and bad no matter where you go, kid. Don't get discouraged, you will have a much better life on the surface…I promise. Just, I want you to know what to expect in case…"

Eleanor startled me slightly as she snapped, "Johnny don't you dare talk like that! You and I are leaving Rapture together one way or another, that is my promise to you."

I said, "Eleanor…please don't talk like that…I can't stand the thought of you dying here in this hole."

She flashed me a gentle smile before she asked in response, "You think I feel any different about you?" I smiled ever so slightly in response. She continued, "Johnny, I know that I am not prepared for the surface…I would so easily misjudge them…I need you, Father…now more than ever."

I sighed before I remarked, "Hate to burst your bubble again, kid, but…I am not some 'master of the surface' or anything. I did not have a notable life outside the Navy. No family other than my siblings and no social friends."

My master smiled before she assured me, "Neither do I, Johnny, but we will have each other and that's all that matters. Besides, we will have the others with us as well."

She paused briefly. Then, she remarked with a frightening, cold tone that was completely devoid of any compassion as her beautiful blue eyes changed to become hypnotic blue pools that emitted unimaginable cruelty, "Mother is…interfering…again. I will speak to you again soon, Father."

The feeling of calming bliss faded until it vanished completely. Looking around, I noticed Alpha inspecting the bathroom of the rundown office. As I turned my entire frame in order to look towards the bathroom, I suddenly became aware of a familiar pheromone in the air. The sweet, pacifying scent of a Little Sister that had become harsh and bitter in the aftertaste: a Big Sister.

The lithe, armored mature adolescent was nearby. Furthermore, there was something different about this Big Sister. The protector from Ryan Amusements and the one that had been monitoring us ever since we had entered Pauper's Drop had much sweeter pheromones. This young woman, however, had pheromones that were much more bitter than her sisters. Perhaps she possessed Plasmid powers that were more potent than the one that we had encountered in Ryan Amusements and also the resident guardian of the Drop? If that was the case, then the girl was older and most likely from either the first line of Mass Production Gatherers or she was one of my own brothers' charges.

The latter troubled me greatly. Emily and Eleanor were accounted for. If this former Little Sister was indeed an Alpha Series Gatherer, then there was either another one of my brethren that had survived or, much more likely, there was a broken husk wandering somewhere in the ruins of Rapture.

I could not imagine the hell that my poor brother was in if the Big Sister was indeed a former Alpha Series charge. The compulsive desire for his daughter would be tearing his psyche and his body apart as it would for any proud father that could not find his precious daughter. Worse, an Alpha Series in such a state would be an extremely formidable foe. Unlike Subject Alpha, the Tin Men, and myself, who would fight to the death but only if required, the Mad Daddy would fight with the intention of dying.

My thoughts turned to the Big Sister that was now stalking us alongside her sisters. She could be the "interference" that Eleanor had mentioned. If she was, then Tenenbaum's plan was working. The more chaos that Alpha and I caused, the more obsessed Sofia became with stopping us. The fact that I had seemingly come back to life out of thin air as if I was some incarnation of her greatest nightmare alone was likely deeply troubling for the psychiatrist.

My train of thought was derailed when Alpha commented from where he was directly in front of me, "Sofia sent one of the Elites after us…"

I rumbled back with my Alpha Series voice, "Elites?"

He did a slight posture change because of his inability to nod before he replied, "Yes, sir. There are about seven of them…Emily and Eleanor included…that are former Alpha Series Little Sisters…their bodies have absorbed far more ADAM than their Mass Production Model counterparts…so much that it changed them more internally than externally. You have seen and felt what happened to Miss Eleanor, sir. Granted, Sofia took her case to the uncharted extreme but my Emily and the others are like Miss Eleanor…less human and more like goddesses."

Something dawned on me at that moment: the Big Sister that I had encountered in what was left of the Adonis Luxury Resort. Her Plasmid and physical prowess had indeed been unusually potent. Perhaps, she was one of the "Elite" Big Sisters. I asked, "Do you know their names?"

He replied, "Only two for certain: Emily and Eleanor. One probable: Jennifer. The others I have no idea."

'Jennifer…'

A memory of the dirty-blonde, almost brunette, girl's charmingly plain but beautiful face smiling up at me as she waved in a shy but at the same time confident manner briefly entered my mind's eye. If there was still mercy in this world, then Jennifer would still be alive. Such as quiet girl, but staggeringly brilliant. At times, I often wondered if her silence was even due to shyness or instead from her intelligence reducing her desire to converse with "normal" people who could not comprehend the world as she did.

She was a good-natured girl despite her somewhat cold demeanor. If someone bothered to put forth the effort to get to know her, he or she would learn that she was very pleasant to be around. Unfortunately, she was also just as stubborn as she was brilliant. Once she set her mind to accomplishing a goal, she would commit the entirety of herself into the task; often at the expense of her health and those around her. When she was in one of these spells, Lambda, her Alpha Series Big Daddy, would sometimes have to force her to gather ADAM to ensure that she did not slip into withdraw.

I mentally shivered at the prospect that this Elite Big Sister might be Jennifer. We were in for one hell of a fight if it was her. With her ADAM-supercharged body, high intelligence, and borderline obsessive tendencies, she would be brutal and relentless. She would not stop until she killed us both if I failed to pacify her the same way I had the first sister.

With no choice but to continue forward, I let out a low rumble that vibrated the walls around us and then turned towards the exit of the office. Upon exiting the office, I continued down the dirty, blood stained hallway to the far end. However, I paused as I began to hear the familiar sound of deranged Splicers chanting in throaty hums.

Subject Delta and my Protector Instincts began to rile from the far reaches of my mind as I also began to smell the hypnotically alluring pheromone signature of my beloved master. In a trance, I began to thunder my way towards the source of the chanting and my master's pheromones. My surroundings were a blur to me as I honed in on the Little Sister. As the scent became all-consuming of my psyche, the molten hot rage of my instincts began to build.

These people, no these animals apparently could not take a hint to cease their religious bastardization of the precious little girls that they were not fit to beg at their feet. My eye and auxiliary lights began to flash a threatening hellish red as the rage grew to a dangerous fever pitch. Beneath my copper face, what was left of my human face curled its lips up into a cruel sneer.

'Weak…so weak…being the bitch's puppets...she snaps her fingers and you all bark like good little doggies. None of you are worth so much as one hair on their heads. That fool "Johnny Topside" may pity you rats but I DO NOT. There is no "salvation" for animals. There is no "great reward" for child abusers. There is no "divine intervention" that is going to save you. There is only the Devil's Due…and I have come to collect.'

At the far end of the hallway, there was a demolished exit in the side of the building. There, a gangplank connected the gutted building to the roof of the Clinic. Directly before me on the other side of the gangplank was a Little Sister Vent. As with before, there was a kind of bastardized religious shrine before it in the form of a sacrificial altar that was covered by a blue cloth sheet. Dozens of lit white candles were at the base of the vent as well as "material offerings". Above the vent was a makeshift blue banner with the message, "WE WILL MEET AGAIN", written with white house paint on its surface. On the sacrificial altar, I saw a motionless female Splicer. Around the altar were two chanting Splicers. One was a man in a ripped tan business suit. The other was a woman in a tattered blue dress. Both of them were rising up and down on their knees with their hands raised up into the air.

The Little Sister was in the vent, I could smell her. However, the poor girl was terrified of the Splicers and rightfully so as I could see that the female Splicer was still breathing. The Splicers were trying to trick the girl out of the sanctuary of the vent network?!

Red light bathed the area before me as my eye and two auxiliary lights began to emit their steady hellish red indicator of my "mood" while the maddening rage that had been building inside of me broke loose inside my mind. With the artificial fury of my Protector Instincts in complete control of my mind, I let out a guttural roar that was loud enough to cause a painful ringing in my ears and vibrate the buildings around me. As I did so, I also revved up my industrial-grade drill.

The two Splicers around the altar cried out in both shock and fright as they quickly stood to face me. The male Splicer picked up a section of lead pipe while the female Splicer drew a revolver. The Thuggish Splicer ran towards me with his pipe raised up in the air as .32-caliber rounds were repelled away by my drill's electromagnet dynamo. Letting out an enraged roar, I charged towards the man. Within seconds, I was upon him. Using my momentum and weight, I collided against his soft frame and sent him falling backwards onto the cold, wet concrete surface of the Clinic's roof. His pained cries fell on deaf ears as I trampled him beneath my heavy diving boots while I charged towards the Leadhead Splicer.

As I reached her, I swung my spinning drill to the right and cracked her across the side of her deformed face. The denizen cried out as she landed on the concrete roof with enough force to drop her crudely repaired revolver, which broke into several pieces after I stomped down onto it with my right foot. I stood over her for a second as I powered down my drill's powerful motor and then reached down. Clamping down on the top of her head with my gauntlet-encased left hand, I picked her up off the floor and then held her up in the air before me.

The woman desperately clawed at my left arm as she cried out in fear. Amused, I laughed at her in a series of repeated grunts. I then turned and threw her over the side of the roof between the billboard that was roughly in the center of the roof on the edge and the square concrete projection that was next to where the makeshift gangplank that I had just used connected to the Clinic building. The woman screamed as she flew through the air until she impacted the collapsed Atlantis Express train car. A sick dull thud echoed through the air as the impact snapped the Splicer's back and was followed up by a second one when the corpse landed on the ground three stories below.

Letting out another guttural roar and once again revving up my drill, I wheeled around to face the faking Splicer that was still motionless on the altar before the Little Sister Vent. She wanted to be a sacrifice? Well, it would be wrong of me to deny her wish. Plunging my drill's spinning razor-sharp tip into her chest, I eviscerated the Splicer before she could react. With my drill still inside of her dying frame, I powered down my tool and then violently ripped it out of her. I ignored the blood drops that were rolling down the scratched surface of my segmented eye as I ignited the blue banner above the Little Sister Vent and the bloodied altar with two blasts of my Incinerate! Plasmid.

The crackle of flames and black smoke filled the air as the genetic flames began to consume the cloth. The hellish red light being emitted from my segmented eye and auxiliary lights was replaced by golden yellow as my rage subsided enough for my rational thoughts to regain control of my mind. However, the presence of my Protector Instincts was still very strong because the monster's blood lust remained unsatisfied.

Get back in your cage Subject Delta!

Weak old man…you lack the will to protect the Little Sisters!

Like Hell I don't you monster! This is NOT the example that we need to set for Eleanor! This is destruction just for the sake of destruction!

Violence is the only way to teach these vermin to leave the girls alone!

There is a time and place for violence Subject Delta, and this is NOT it! Get back in your cage! I will let you out when it is time!

Very well, old man. I will leave you to it.

The artificial rage subsided and I continued forward along the roof of the Clinic. Before me was a large square concrete projection in the center of the roof. Beyond it, I saw the telltale moving red light of a Security Camera that was mounted to the far concrete bulkhead. To the right of the concrete bulkhead, I saw a small wooden water tower that had three red fuel drums around its base. Fontaine must have had it installed so that his clinic would still be in business if Ryan cut the water supply with his control over the city's Ryan Industries-owned infrastructure. To the left of the concrete structure, I saw a pitch black tunnel for the overhead rail line that had collapsed.

Keeping in line with the large concrete project to hide from the Security Camera, I moved along the roof of the Clinic in the direction of the King Pawn building. Upon reaching the concrete structure, I moved to the right corner and then waited for the camera's search light to reach its far left extreme. When it did, I emerged from the cover and willed a blast of Electro Bolt from the ported digits of my left hand.

My attack left the device vulnerable long enough for Alpha to fire a Hack Rivet into its teardrop-shaped frame. The change from red to green light indicated that the device was now under my brother's control and we proceeded forward. Before us, between the concrete bulkhead and the water tower was another makeshift gangplank that led to a heavily corroded watertight security door.

We began to make our way towards it. However, as we did, suddenly, a deafening, high-pitched shriek ripped through the air. I wheeled around just in time to see the hellish red light being emitted from the Big Sister's large central porthole before her lithe frame slammed into my armored chest from where she had been secretly observing us in the darkness of the nearby tunnel of the overhead rail line.

The sheer power behind the impact was enough to send both my assailant and I over the side of the roof and down to the unforgiving concrete floor three stories below in front of the entrance to the Clinic. Upon slammed into the ground on my left side with enough force to create a crater, I rumbled out a groan of pure agony as I felt my left humerus, ulna, and radius shatter as if they were mere dinner plates. A fine red mist coated the interior surface of my eye as I coughed up blood when I tried to breathe. A sharp stab of pain that felt as if I was being impaled by a molten metal spear in the left side of my chest confirmed the broken ribs that were now tearing into my internal organs like meat cutters.

My wounds would have easily killed me had it not been for my First Aid Reserve Tank, which almost instantly began to pump its red liquid into my body. However, it meant going through the secondary misery of feeling my bones and organs repair themselves at an unnaturally rapid rate. Within seconds of impacting the floor, my body was in adequate enough condition to be able to fight though it would take a few minutes for it to recover completely.

Meanwhile, the Big Sister landed a few feet away on her hands and feet and then, with unnerving ease, moved on her four limbs as if she was an animal. Rotating herself, she turned to glare at me with her hellish red eye. Her eye remained locked on me as she moved sideways on her hands and feet towards the strange square structure in the center of the courtyard while she growled with a strangely mechanical tone. The enraged Big Sister looked away briefly when she finally stood and jumped up to stand on top of the strange structure.

Something about this girl was different from the other Big Sisters that I had encountered. She was indeed the one whose pheromones I had detected in the office building. However, now that we were in close proximity to each other, I was able to make out that her suit was heavily modified. Most noticeable of the modifications was that the white or light tan canvas had been replaced by charcoal black canvas to allow her blend in with the darkened ruins of the city. In addition, her bulbous head only had the one center porthole that would give away her presence while she stalked her prey, had been manufactured with craftsman-like perfection instead of being crudely cobbled together, and also sported a flat black paint job.

She did not have a basket to transport a Little Sister charge, which meant that she served no other purpose than being a predator for Lamb's Rapture Family. Instead of a large dark grey metal oxygen tank with a bright red wheel-like relief valve on her back, she had a much smaller, skinny, smoke grey tank that was either a modified spare part for one of my own Alpha Series brethren or, tragically, was her own deceased father's right metal lung from his rebreather system that had been re-purposed to work for her.

The small, hollow, square-shaped diving weight that had been just above her right thigh was gone. Instead, the slightly swollen appearance of her torso and the noticeably readjusted brown leather belt-like straps along the front of her still hourglass-shaped midsection indicated that the loss of the diving weight had been compensated by the addition of what was likely chain mail armor beneath the upper body section of her suit.

The sword-like needle attached to her left arm was sporting a different head than the other protectors. While it was still an over-sized needle, I could see that it had been forged from an unidentifiable high-quality steel alloy that appeared to be giving off a soft red glow as its mirror-like polished surface reflected the red light of the nearby train signal lamp. In addition, a barely noticeable discrepancy in the shade of the metal at the tip of the hollow needle indicated that it was tungsten carbide tipped, which gave her weapon greatly improved penetration capability against armored and unarmored victims.

The vaguely bowl-shaped, non-symmetrical metal shoulder pads that had been crudely cobbled together from scrap pieces of steel had been replaced by purposely manufactured, identical, jointed metal pads. The pads accentuated her shoulders so perfectly that they must have been custom fit for her. The joints in the pads granted her greatly improved arm movement and thus greater agility than her sisters.

The cumbersome and restricting leg braces had been completely removed because her legs were noticeably thicker and did not require external support. Her arms were also noticeably thicker than her sisters. She must have been much older than her sisters and was around Eleanor's age. Her body had finished growing some time ago and her ADAM-charged muscles had developed to the point that now she did not have need for leg braces or any other special protective supports as her gangly sisters did.

Her unnaturally potent and unrestricted physical prowess had been demonstrated only seconds earlier when she had hit me with more force than any lumbering Bouncer Tin Man would ever be capable of achieving even with his much heavier frame. The freight train-like impact had been enough to lift me off my feet and send me flying several feet to go over the side of the roof of the Clinic. However, her body was still very feminine.

In the seconds that I had to take in her appearance as she stood upright on the roof of the structure in the center of the courtyard, the only description that came to my mind that could properly label the intimidating mixture of extremely feminine yet extremely muscular build was that she was an Amazonian woman like from those old mythological stories about the race of warrior women. They were said to have only been defeated, once, by the ultimate mythological male warrior: Achilles. Even the great Achilles was said to have nearly died in the battle against the Amazonian queen, who had been dominating the male warrior until the last possible second when Achilles had forced himself to see her as nothing more than another opponent.

I felt Subject Delta's aroused desire for the Elite Big Sister. However, his primal attraction to the goddess-like young woman was purely based upon his expectation of her being a formidable foe that could release his pent up rage, which the weak Splicer population had thus far failed to satisfy.

Through our link, I heard my master comment, "Johnny, I keep telling you that you are Subject Delta…it is just that mental conditioning that they forced into you."

As I painfully rose to my feet, the enraged former Little Sister let out another deafening shriek of primal fury while dozens of loose objects ranging in size from small pebble-sized pieces of concrete to the corpses of deceased Splicers began to gather in midair above her. A hail of red-hot rivets began to pelt the armored goddess as my brother fired his heavily modified Prototype Rivet Gun from the edge of the Clinic's roof. Despite my brother's inhuman marksmanship, the rivets did not faze the Elite Big Sister and we both had the horrifying realization that the weaponized industrial tool's rounds were not even hurting the ADAM-forged engine of destruction before us.

I only had enough time to get my armored right foot beneath me before the woman used her powerful Telekinesis to hurl the cloud of objects towards me at incredibly high speed. A chunk of concrete the size of a basketball struck my right shoulder hard enough to shatter the shoulder blade. A rusted section of metal rebar the length of a grown man's leg impaled me through my lower left abdomen. One of the red metal fuel drums that had been at the base of the Clinic's water tower exploded against my chest, shredding me with metal shrapnel and engulfing my body in a fireball. However, I somehow managed to remain upright.

As my flesh screamed from being cooked by the blazing inferno on the surface of my diving suit, the monster inside of me roared at Eleanor, "Master, if you wish to mate with your precious 'Johnny', LET ME OUT!"

With the amount of pent up rage inside of me, I was not certain that I could remain in control this time. Horrified, I told my beautiful daughter, "Eleanor, no! He'll kill her if he gets the chance!"

The Elite Big Sister front flipped from the roof of the small structure and landed just before me. Her feet had no sooner made contact with the concrete floor before she charged at me with her large needle poised to strike. Ignoring the maddening agony that was racking my body, I finally managed to stand up. I attempted to counter her with my own charge. However, without the aid of Subject Delta, I was unable to match the onslaught of her physical prowess.

The lithe protector halted my charge with a violent full-body collision. While I was temporarily dazed, she recovered near instantaneously and then thrust her needle into my still partially broken and healing right shoulder. A brief, pained grunt escaped me, which caused the diving suit-clad goddess to let out a cruel amused cackle before she violently ripped her needle out of my shoulder. She then took a step back with her unnaturally large right foot before bringing it back forward to deliver a powerful round house kick.

The incredible physical power of the kick was enough to put a shallow, hairline crack in the center of the middle section of my segmented glass eye when the copper sole of the Big Sister's right diving boot struck the upper part of my copper face. The kick sent me stumbling backwards. In a shower of glass and the shriek of bending metal, I slammed into the chained up entrance of the King Pawn building with enough force to collapse the entire section of the building down onto me. The overhead neon letters that spelled the establishment's name, their grimly metal base, a faded advertisement billboard, and two-thirds of the building's concrete roof rained down on top of me.

Effectively buried by the rubble of the mostly demolished building, I was powerless to do anything other than listen to the approaching Big Sister as she moved in for the kill. Meanwhile, I heard a loud crash and then the high-pitched report of Alpha's Prototype Rivet Gun. Despite the choking darkness that had overtaken my body, I realized that my brother had jumped down from the Clinic's roof and was now firing his industrial-grade weapon on the move as he rushed to my aid. However, the Big Sister continued to ignore him as she neared her trapped prey because she knew that his malfunctioning Protector Instincts rendered him as being less of a threat.

For the first time since my demise, I heard the voice of the Eleanor that I had defended with such passion all those years ago. All of her superior, calm demeanor; all of her maturity; all of her confidence was gone as if it had never existed as the goddess-like Eleanor suddenly vanished from existence. I felt her dormant Little Sister conditioning break free from the farthest reaches of her mind and, for the first time in years, took control of her as it had countless times during her childhood whenever she was forcibly ripped from the illusion of her "perfect world".

I had absolutely no doubt that Sofia heard her daughter with her own ears as the physically full grown Eleanor screamed with her robotic-sounding Little Sister voice both audibly and through the telepathic link of our Pair Bonding.

Physically crying, the frightened young woman called out for her Big Daddy Protector, "DADDY! DADDY HELP ME! DADDY I'M SCARED! BAD WORD LADY TAKE ME TO WET SCARY PLACE WHILE YOU WERE X'ING THE EYES OF SPOOKY LADY AND SPOOKY MAN!"

I had just enough time to realize that Eleanor's psyche had been shocked back into the state that it had felt the safest: New Year's Eve 1959 before the gathering session. Confused and without her memories of what happened, Eleanor now mistakenly believed that her mother, "Bad Word Lady", had kidnapped her while I was killing Comstock and Elizabeth. In her hysterical state, Eleanor tried to make sense of what our Pair Bond was telling her but her Little Sister mindset was too ill-equipped to properly process it.

Frightened beyond the ability to be able to decide what to do, the little girl went on her blind faith in me. After all, I was her father and fathers can do anything and always know what to do. I calmly explained to my daughter, "Eleanor, I know that you are confused and scared right now but I need you to help me. Daddy needs you to be strong right now, okay sweetie? Can you do that for me?"

Even in her shell shocked state, my incredibly resilient Eleanor calmed herself and nodded her head before she replied, "I'm a big girl, Daddy."

I smiled slightly before I said, "That's my girl. Now, get ready to help Daddy."

Just as the rubble was suddenly levitated out of the way just enough to allow the Big Sister to see me, my daughter screamed, "BAD LADY! YOU NO MAKE DADDY AN ANGEL! KILL HER DADDY! KILL HER!"

A sudden wave of calm purpose washed over me. Instead of the typical, dramatic onrush of the artificial fury of my Protector Instincts as it stormed into my mind, I became consumed by the single-minded desire to do what my beautiful master had commanded without any hesitation or questions asked.

Unaware of what had happened, the Elite Big Sister thrust her needle-like weapon towards the center of my segmented eye. With hardly any effort, I lifted my massive left arm up from where it was pinned beneath an automobile-sized section of the collapsed concrete roof and caught the hollow steel alloy tube in midair when its tip was mere inches from the surface of my segmented eye.

The armored goddess-like young woman let out a strange noise that vaguely sounded like she had rhetorically asked in a confused tone, "W-what?"

Her frame became bathed by hellish red light as my eye and auxiliary lights changed to indicate that I was now in my aggressive state. Absentmindedly observing the object that I was holding with a vice-like grip, I addressed the confused young woman with the patterned grunts of my Alpha Series voice, "Young lady, you should not be playing with sharp things. You might hurt yourself."

Before she could react, I simultaneously pulled down on her mounted needle and used the raw physical strength of my tree trunk-like legs to propel myself out of the rubble as if I was a bat out of Hell. Giving off a loud metal clang and cracking the surface of her eye, I delivered a brutal headbutt into the center of the Big Sister's face.

The tough woman stifled a cry of pain to try to prevent showing weakness as she stumbled slightly. Before she could recover and still gripping her needle, I quickly forced her left arm behind her back, lifted her off her feet, and held her back against my armored chest by pressing the side of my drill into the soft surface of her abdomen just beneath her metal chest plate.

With her back pinned against my chest and in pure agony because I was holding her up in the air by her left arm while it was forced into an unnatural angle behind her back, the Elite Big Sister let out a soft mechanical-sounding whine as she attempted to understand what was happening. Compounding her confusion-based discomfort of the situation, due to the small oxygen tank on her back, we were close enough to feel the intense heat given off the others body through the thinner leather and canvas sections of our diving suits.

As the goddess attempted to get free from my grasp, I whispered into her left ear, "Now that we are on equal terms, let's see if you can hold your own against ol' Subject Delta…or are just a flash in the pan. My master wants me to kill you…but…be a good little girl and help me find release…and I'll let you live. Sound fair?"

The confused young woman let out a brief noise that vaguely sounded like a confession about having never fought a Big Daddy before now. I assured her, "Don't worry about that. First times are always messy. Just do what feels natural." Then, I released my grip on her.

The freed Big Sister ran towards the collapsed train car, dodging Alpha as she did so. The unnaturally physically well-endowed young woman did not even slow down as she ran up the wet metal hide of the train car. Anticipating her lunge attack, I reached down and extracted the section of rebar from the left side of my lower abdomen with my massive left hand. As I pulled it free from my body, the channel that it left behind in my body was almost instantly healed by the miraculous red liquid in my First Aid Reserve Tank. I had seconds to spare so I clenched the rusted piece of metal in the palm of my left hand and superheated it with my Incinerate! Plasmid.

When the Big Sister reached the top of the train car, she compressed herself and then used the raw power of her well-developed leg muscles to propel herself backwards through the air in my direction. As she neared me, she twisted her body around to face forward with her needle poised to impale me once again.

However, when she had turned to face me, she was met by the sight of the molten bar of metal in my left hand just as I threw it at her as if it was a javelin. Unable to stop herself, the Big Sister was powerless to prevent the section of rebar from impaling her through the center of her abdomen despite the chain mail armor beneath her suit. The impact also caused her to land hard on her left side well short of where I was.

I slowly advanced on the downed predator as she let out agonized cries. Suffering from paraplegia because the section of rebar had severed her spinal column, the Elite Big Sister began to rock back and forth by swinging her arms to shift her weight. In the name of sportsmanship, I waited passively about five feet away. The armored young woman managed to roll herself over onto her back and then used a combination of the momentum and the protruding section of the rebar to achieve a pseudo-backflip while she extended her right hand back over her right shoulder.

Now effectively doing a handstand on her right hand, the adaptive woman calmly rotated the rest of her body around her right arm as she glared at me upside down with her cracked red eye. Her inhuman physical prowess was again demonstrated as her right arm was clearly not under any strain in its new role as her only leg and also that she was in perfect balance as if she had been using her right hand as her only foot her entire life.

Clearly not being overly inconvenienced by the paralysis of her legs, the Big Sister propelled herself towards me through the air. Just before she impacted the center of my chest she curled herself into a living cannonball. I was unable to react in time due to my close proximity to her. However, to my surprise, the force of the impact was weak and I quickly realized that it had never been her intention to hurt me.

Instead, the clever young goddess had used the thick copper hide of my diving helmet to push the impaling rebar back through her until the majority of it was protruding from her abdomen and other end was flush with the surface of her back. I could not help but be spellbound as she frantically crawled over to the nearby upright abandoned refrigerator unit after landing at my feet. Dragging herself along the cold wet concrete floor on her right side and propelling herself forward by using her needle, the woman managed to quickly reach the refrigerator.

I remained spellbound as the Big Sister pressed her paralyzed lower extremities flush against the white refrigerator so that she was now facing the large pool of water in the center of the courtyard. Then, giving off a continuous string of heartbreaking pitiful whines, the woman gripped the shaft of the rebar with both of her hands and slowly but surely extracted it from her body by using the refrigerator for leverage.

The area became strangely silent as the whimpering young woman continued to lie next to the pool of water with her back to me. I was still close enough to look over the top of her but she seemed to be in her own world as her arms and legs began to twitch in short bursts. The twitches only seemed to intensify her cries of misery. She dropped the now bloodied section of rebar into the pool of water, which turned the water a light shade of red/green as the Big Sister's heavily ADAM-laden blood began to mix with it, as whatever was happening to her had left her arm muscles too weak to be able to hold the long, thin piece of metal up in the air any longer.

Seconds later, the young woman let out a louder cry of agony that was joined moments later by the sound of sick, wet squelching noises. Looking at the hole in her back, I watched in disgusted amazement as the light from the other side of the hole became smaller and smaller until it was no longer in existence. Instead, a small patch of porcelain-like skin was now visible.

If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would have never believed that it. I had seen Little Sisters' limbs almost instantly repair themselves. However, mending something as trivial as an arm or a leg was one thing. What I had just witnessed was a section of vertebrae and nerve endings being materialized to replace the lost original bone and flesh with perfectly identical stem cell copies.

The success of the stem cell replacement was confirmed moments later when the Big Sister rose to stand on her feet. The paralysis was gone as she demonstrated the complete recovery of her lower extremities by somersaulting a few feet to the right. When she stopped directly in line with the far watertight bulkhead that led to the Market District, she willed a ball of genetic flame to manifest in the palm of her right hand and then threw it at me.

I almost pitied her ignorance of the nature of my kind as I took control of the fireball with my Telekinesis Plasmid. The Big Sister was clearly surprised by my demonstration of my own Plasmid capabilities. Granted, the heyday of my brethren was gone so it was perfectly understandable that she would have either forgotten or simply had never known that the Alpha Series Big Daddies had been originally designed to permit the efficient wielding of Plasmids, but the abilities themselves were largely absent amongst us, myself included, because Fontaine Futuristics did not believe that it was worth the extra expenditure to outfit us with Plasmids when we were originally introduced to Rapture.

At the time, we were the ultimate weapons of Rapture even without Plasmids so it was decided to simply not outfit us with the abilities because they were unnecessary. It was not until later when the Splicers had become formidable opponents that some of us were outfitted with Plasmids. However, due to our questionable loyalties and what happened to us when our Pair Bonds were broken, Fontaine Futuristics and, later, Ryan Industries instead simply designed new Gene Tonics for us.

Before the Elite Big Sister could react, I willed her own fire blast back at her. The ball of genetic flame hit home in the center of her chest but failed to ignite her frame. She recovered and turned to retreat towards the security door but I willed a blast of Electro Bolt from the ported digits of my gauntlet-encased left hand. Ignoring the uncomfortable sensation of fresh EVE being pumped into my body through its intravenous line from my EVE Reserve Tank, I revved up my heavily modified drill and then charged at the immobilized young woman in a Drill Dash.

Seconds later, I collided with her frame in a cloud of metal sparks and the sound of protesting bones. However, I was not weak like that foolish old man Johnny Topside. No, I was Subject Delta: the original and strongest Big Daddy in all of Rapture! I did agree with the old man on one point however. There was indeed a time and place for violence, and this was that time and place.

The vermin inhabiting the ruins of Rapture had been brainwashed by my murderer into believing that these "Big Sisters" were the ultimate predators in this sunken hellhole. I had to "reeducate" the misinformed members of Lamb's little flock that it was not the goddess-like young women that they should fear most. No, I was the ultimate predator in Rapture! Me! Subject Delta! I was the boogeyman for any rat that dared to touch one of the precious Little Sisters! I was the ever present devil that was watching their every move from the shadows. I was the evil that haunted every dark corner of the sunken ruins and the evil that haunted them even in their dreams.

I needed to demonstrate my superiority to even an "Elite" Big Sister in as public and dramatic of a fashion as possible so that the rest of Rapture would take note. As such, I effortlessly held her in front of me with my left hand and continued my thundering charge forward towards the watertight security door. When the worn mechanism of the door failed to open the path in time, I used the Big Sister as a battering ram.

The deafening shriek of bending and tearing steel filled the air as large sections of the door flew forward into the glass and steel framed tunnel beyond. To the right, the tunnel led to the Market District. To the left, it led to the boarded up path to the Sinclair Deluxe. In the center of the tunnel, I noticed yet another abandoned refrigerator unit but I did not have enough time to ponder the reason for the unusual number of the household appliance in Pauper's Drop. Taking advantage of the time that I had spent surveying the layout of the tunnel, the Big Sister caught me off guard with a ball of genetic fire. Though she herself was caught in the miniature explosion, it succeeded in loosening my grip just enough for her to use her own formidable strength to pull herself free.

Turning, she ran towards the watertight security door that led to the Market District of The Drop. Letting out a guttural roar, I chased after her. However, the goal of my pursuit was three-fold. First, I had to fulfill my now shell shocked master's command to kill the Big Sister. Second, I had to do the first in as dramatic and destructive manner as possible to give the followers of Lamb's Family a new entity to be afraid of that was not under the control of their leader. Third, I had to accomplish the first two without completely demolishing the Market District because then we would not have the required ingredients to make the Thermite that we needed to get into the Sinclair Deluxe and finally retrieve the Genetic Override Key from Grace.

Not exactly the circumstances that I had been hoping for to vent my pent up rage and frustration upon the goddess that I was now pursuing. I would have preferred to be completely unrestricted as I romped and stomped but I could make do with what I had been given.

Damn it, Subject Delta! This is not a game! Remember that the only vital thing here is the Thermite. Everyone has put their lives in your hands. This is only Pauper's Drop…we still have several more stops to get through before we can reach Fontaine Futuristics and we only have a few more hours left before the Fail Safe will kill us both…or worse. Do not ruin everything that Tenenbaum, Alpha, and Eleanor sacrificed so much to make possible by throwing it all away just because you don't get to kill something every five seconds!

Try having a little more faith in yourself, Johnny Topside. After all, you and I are the same person. I am just an artificial personality created by the Protector Instincts that they forced into your mind. I am not controlling you and I never will be able to…you are the one that is controlling me. Have faith in me and I will not let them down…after all, I feel the same way about them that you do.

I will put my faith in you as long as you keep sight of what needs to be done, but you and I are not the same person. Please do not do anything reckless…Eleanor is in a very fragile state right now and she is watching through our Pair Bond. We have to be her rock right now so do not pull another stunt like the one you did against Comstock and Elizabeth.

I did what I had to do to keep us alive, Topside! Get off your high horse, I love master just as much as you do!

You…will…never…love Eleanor the same way that I do you monster. Now, just concentrate on not killing everyone…which would mean the world to Eleanor if you do not heartlessly kill her sister as she watches through our Pair Bond. If you truly "love" Eleanor, do not kill that Big Sister, Delta.

Have faith, Topside. Even "monsters" can have hearts.

Damn it, Subject Delta, this is not a fucking ga…

Blocking out the egotistic rants of the old man, I concentrated on the tasks before me. By that time, we had reached the security door that led to the Market District. The aged mechanism of the watertight door cried out in protest but managed to open the path in time to avoid the fate of the other door. Hell-bent on causing the demise of the other, we entered the Market District.

Because we were both apex predators, we both knew that the "survival of the fittest" law of nature dictated that only one of us would be walking away from this final fight. The Market District was a dead end with only one exit so there would be no escape now. I did not want to kill the "sister" of my beloved master but I also wanted to be by my master's side once more.

A thought occurred to me just before we reengaged each other. I smiled slightly beneath my emotionless façade as I realized that this was perhaps the most significant death match that would ever occur in this hellhole called Rapture. It was the proverbial showdown between the old and new evolutionary paths to determine which evolutionary line was truly superior.

Being the apex Big Daddy of Rapture, I represented the pinnacle of the "old" evolutionary line that had dominated Rapture's Evolutionary Battlefield since before the Civil War. Meanwhile, the Elite Big Sister represented the pinnacle of the "new" evolutionary line that had recently evolved into apex predators and were now challenging the Big Daddies for dominance in the merciless game of survival in Rapture's Evolutionary Battlefield.

It was time to find out which was truly the ultimate predator in Rapture: the Big Daddy or the Big Sister.

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A.N.:

Coming soon: Subject Delta vs. Elite Big Sister