The Case of the Lost Child 02

"Eyes ahead, Liz," Lisa instructed, heeding her own advice as skittering and scratching and quiet moans sounded from the shadows around them.

"It feels like we are walking through a horror movie." Elizabeth quickened her pace until she was right next to Lisa. Her fingers were tight on her own weapon, the knuckles white. "Why don't they attack?"

Another shadow moved, the disturbing visage of hanging bandages and a bunny eared-mask just enough to send a shiver down Lisa's spine. "Frank's called them off for the moment. They're not so far gone that they'll disobey him. Not yet. Not until we get the kid."

"Sally? But I thought you said -"

"She's a walking repository of Adam now," Lisa murmured. "These poor bastards aren't going to be able to help themselves when they see her. They're addicts to a degree you just can't comprehend. There's a reason I don't touch plasmids, Elizabeth. Small doses is not a big deal, it just tends to rewrite your DNA and spur stem cell growth. Big doses, or repeated doses, suddenly the body forgets how to fix itself. It needs the Adam to keep functioning, to stay sane. More and more changes occur, changes that are basically like half-directed cancer. They can feel their minds slipping away every second they don't get another fix."

"That's…" Elizabeth trailed off, shivering. "Why would someone do that to themselves?"

"Plasmids were marketed as safe at first. And they are. Right up until they aren't. It's just where that line is that no one is sure of. I'm not rolling those dice, not when I have people to go home to. These guys? They wanted power, or they thought they'd beat the odds, or they didn't hear the warnings, or - worst of the worst - they didn't care. Some of them were definitely promised that they could get their minimum fix as long as they kept working for their boss. Fontaine's a good grifter. He tends to follow through on his promises."

"Right up until he stabs you in the back I suppose?" Elizabeth stated, her voice soft.

"Sounds like you know the type."

"Comstock - my adoptive father - was much the same. Housewares is just ahead."

Lisa held out a hand, bringing them to a halt, frowning. Her partner was right, their destination was in sight. However, she could also see a cobbled together passageway that was just beside it with a handwritten sign: Lab Facilities.

"Fuck. We need to go to Suchong's section first."

"Lisa," Elizabeth said, her voice low and tight. "I thought we had an agreement."

"We're not being attacked yet. Do you want to search that lab while we're towing a screaming kid who's likely not going to be happy with either of us and with splicers at the door? Or do you want to take a quick look around while we're mostly just being creeped on?"

Elizabeth scowled. "I don't like this."

"Neither do I. But we have to do it."

"Because Fontaine said so? Are you a glorified errand girl, Lisa?"

"Fuck you," she hissed. "I'm trying to help. We need something to bargain with, and Suchong may have been a crazy man, but he was a competent crazy man. He'd have had a plan and he'd have gotten things together. What Fontaine is looking for, even if that doesn't help us, I'll give even odds that there's something in that lab we can use."

Elizabeth's lips thinned into a line. The shadows continued to dance in Lisa's peripheral vision and the noises and the restless splicers set her more and more on edge. Her grip on her gun tightened.

"Okay. Five minutes."

"Deal."

Hurrying along the small passage, the two quickly entered Suchong's lab. It had seen better days. Ryan had sunk this section in a hurry, that was probably why she hadn't heard about it yet. And also why Fontaine hadn't sent anyone in himself yet. He couldn't trust splicers in here. With the leaks and the creaking…One wrong move would collapse the entire place. And he'd never come in himself with shit this precarious.

"Well this is terrifying," Elizabeth muttered. "Are we certain this is safe to be standing in?"

Lisa eyed water pouring from a burst seam along one wall, swallowing her first several curses. "That five minutes? Let's make it three. Find anything shiny, find any notes. Grab and go. We'll look at it outside. Fuck me, I did not survive six months by doing stupid shit like this!"

Surging ahead, Lisa vaulted over a stack of equipment and grabbed several documents from a dead Big Daddy that looked likely to be important. Then she quickly side-stepped to a corpse lying on a table and grabbed notes from his pocket as well. Lisa's scowl increased as she realized that the dead man was her wayward mad scientist himself - with a giant drill in his chest.

"How the fuck do you manage to piss off a Big Daddy? You designed the damn things! God, it's like looking at a worse Leet. Fucking idiot, you were supposed to be smart. What am I even doing here if this is how you got yourself killed?" Pulling a small sealed cylinder from the man's pocket, she shook her head and moved on.

After another minute of fruitless searching, she met back up with Elizabeth at the front of the destroyed lab.

"I may have found something, Lisa." The brunette held up two items, one was an audio recording, the other a caulking tool. At least, it would have been a caulker if a caulker had a trigger and aiming sights and a shoulder stock.

"Good, let's see what we -" A groan echoed through the entire room and the water level abruptly rose nearly two inches as rivets popped around them. "- found outside," Lisa finished. She grabbed Elizabeth's arm. That was all the encouragement the other woman needed as they ran back down the cramped access tube.

Sealing the entrance behind them, Lisa breathed a little easier as the groaning and splashing was cut off. "Christ, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Okay, Liz, let me take a quick look at these papers, while you play that tape. Any idea what the gun does?"

"It…felt…familiar…" She was running her hands over the tool, her eyes narrowed to slits. Lisa frowned.

Hsss. Re-ss-t. S-ar. *-boot.

Lisa staggered, holding a hand to her head, wincing. "Fuck me, I preferred when you were out of commission entirely. Ouch!"

"Lisa?" Elizabeth dropped the weapon to her side and placed a hand on Lisa's shoulder helping her to stand back up straight.

"I'm fine. Power is just trying to help, but it's still spazzing out. Listen to your log. I'm going to speed-read."

Elizabeth eyed her, but did as Lisa said, holding the recording to her ear to hear it better.

Lisa for her part took out Suchong's notes. The first was a transcription from an autoprint off of lab notes. Flipping through them, she groaned. "Well, he really was a lot more like Leet than I thought. Looks like the idiot figured out how to make the Big Daddies imprint and then promptly entirely forgot about why he should be careful afterwards. How stupid can you get? Alright, that's useless, what about this one?"

She turned to the personal notes. These were far more interesting. This set of documents appeared to be describing a clone and brainwashing and…

"Oh, well, that's fun." Lisa scowled. She had the Ace-in-the-Hole now. It was just entirely useless to them. A code-phrase for controlling a super clone with backdoor genetic codes to the entirety of Rapture was certainly nice - if she was planning on staying.

The sealed tube from Suchong's pocket remained a mystery as it only had a label but nothing to tell her what that label meant: Lutece Particle.

"So, I got some good, some bad, some useless on my end. How about you, Liz?" Lisa looked to her side. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath. "Elizabeth?!"

Her partner had gone pale, her left hand limp, the caulking gun thing nearly falling from her loose fingers. Her right hand was clenched so tight around the recorder held to her ear that it was amazing she hadn't cracked the casing. Her eyes were wide and staring at nothing. "Suchong, he was working with Fink, Fink from my world. He - they made Songbird. They made my jailer. They made me."

Elizabeth looked down to the caulker, her breaths coming in short pants. "Lisa…Suchong…he used Fink's research on me and…He could force open tears…"

"Oh." Lisa's mouth was dry. She should be saying more. Her friend was having a crisis. The static suddenly blaring in her head was certainly in agreement that her little utterance wasn't enough to handle the situation. And yet, and yet…

She could make this work!