Raising Rapture: Part Three
[Raising Rapture: Part One](%5C)
[Raising Rapture: Part Two](%5C)
_ Raising Rapture: Part Three _
Note: I will get to some smut eventually; just bear with me.
_ BioShock _
_ Raising Rapture _
In New Rapture, night has no meaning. The huge city, suspended by carbon-nanofiber ropes, hangs from a huge cavern deep under the Atlantic, built under the abandoned over-city; True Rapture. At all hours, lights flicker around the plastic-plated cave, and the city itself is a gleaming hub of spiraling thought. New Rapture is a place of intense scholasticism, protected by an elite force of warrior-scientists, its' people servile only to the endlessly-beating drums of progress. They are indifferent to the scrabbling at their ceiling of True Rapture's only inhabitants, once-human, schizophrenic genetic patchworks called Splicers, who wielded the biological technology of True Rapture with reckless abandon. They ignored the pulses that the 'civilized world' put out, ignoring the dwellers of the surface. Their knowledge was far beneath their own.
And for the most part, they ignored us. 'Us', in this case, being a squad of U.S. Marines, who had come to their city to investigate the disappearance of a NUMA submarine. We found the crew, alright... Indoctrinated in under two weeks into the ranks of the warrior-scientists. With that mission under our belts, we had a much more important one to tend to; getting the hell out of both Raptures. We had to get back to our government; there was enough scientific information here to put us back on top maybe forever. More than that, though, was the mission of self-preservation. In less than seven hours, we were going to be killed.
Winston Teabbing, administrator of Rapture, had offered us a choice; joining the ranks of New Rapture, or death . We choose death. We'd been taken back to the airlock, and given our weapons and equipment back. Winston said that he was doing it to 'be kind; give you a chance to expire on your own terms.' Personally, he probably meant to say 'to be sporting; no fun in executions!' Well, he fucked up. Never be 'sporting' with Marines; we do not play fair. Like now, for instance. I'd picked up a map under their noses, and we were going to break for True Rapture, to escape at our leisure. I was certain that we could take on both New and True Rapture both. In fact, in my mind, it was a done thing. Who am I, you may ask, that claims he is going to take the world by the horns? Simple; My name is Daniel Travis, I'm a Marine, and I'm a mean bastard.
I closed my eyes, and rested the side of my head against the cool metal hatch. I'm not hung-over; I'm listening. Through the hermetic seal, I can hear what sounds like two pairs of boots on the plastic floor. "Two," I say, turning to D.O.B. The gnarled man smirked, and said "They think two guards and a locked door can hold down a squad of Marines? I think they're suffering pressure sickness."
Mean Bitch slid a fresh belt into her T20. "Well, they're about to contract acute lead poisoning." She racked the slide, and smiled like a predator. "Payback's a bitch, and so am I."
Downbeat moved his head in time with his music, reassembling his sniper rifle in spasmodic jerks in time with the beat. He slapped the scope on, and leered. "Cue balls wanna make trouble, they ain't never dealt with me before." He pulled a .50 shell out of a pocket, and sighted alongside it. "This thing's like a great song; you hear it once, and it'll stay in your head."
Senior clanked as he heaved his bulk off a seat. Senior isn't fat, or anything; he's paranoid. Ammunition and spare kit hung from his grizzled frame, and he frowned. "These punks are about to learn a lesson too long in the teaching; Let your enemies fade into the shadows, and they'll strike when your back is turned."
Reigndown buckled on the last bandolier of grenades, and stood up. Helpful tip; if you're standing near my buddy and hear a 'click', pray to whatever deities you hold dear. Explosives simply dripped from his as he walked over to the door, and started setting a charge on it. He stopped after a second, and cocked a scarred ear. "Hey... Hear that? Sounds like Reign."
Komodo sniffed along the body of her C-23, and smiled. Then, she licked it. I shivered at the sight; she knows a few things about her mate, to be true. She said "Well, if everyone's going to make some kind of cute remark, let me have a turn. They're going to find out that just one bite from a Komodo is death on legs."
I frowned as I buckled on my combat armor. "Um... They're about to discover that... I'm going to show them what... Dammit! I can't make anything zippy out of Alpha!"
Everyone got a good laugh out of my stumble, and Komodo slithered up to me and embraced me. "Oh, don't worry, honey... I still love you, even if you're stupid."
I laughed, and pushed her away. "Oh really? Ghoul wouldn't say anything, either... Would you call him stupid?"
She stared at me with big green eyes. "Of course not. He'd... God, I don't know. Give me a hysterectomy, or make me eat a stiletto."
I stared at her deadpan. I tried to mimic her gaze, but since my eyes are topaz I probably looked less 'innocent' and more 'hungry predator'. "So, you'd call me stupid, but wouldn't say anything to him?"
She butted the top of her head into my chest, and said "That's different. You're a big softie."
I heard retching behind me. I turned around, and saw Mean Bitch giving me the stinkeye. I made a face at her, and said "You're just jealous."
D.O.B. cut her off before she could say something horrible to me, and said "Alright, cut the chatter. Reigndown, status."
Reigndown stuck his tongue out one side of his mouth. "Primed, sir. This little honey should give a nice knock on the door, but leave us unharmed. I'll give DARPA one thing; these shaped charges are godsend."
D.O.B. whistled. "Marines! Fall in! Take cover, and when the charge goes off, do not, repeat, NOT fire into the smoke. We need Rapture to stay in the dark as long as possible. That's why we've set the charge to blow the hinges, but not blow the damn door clear across the world. Downbeat, charge the door afterward. It should still be up, but a good tackle will take it down. Alpha and Mean Bitch will take the right, while Komodo and Reigndown will take the left. I will monitor the situation and direct fire."
We nodded. It was time to get psyched, and after trash talking, the next phase was silent stoicism. I pressed up against the right side of the door, crouching down beside a couch to avoid the shockwave. Mean Bitch crouched behind me, and I could see Reigndown and Komodo assuming positions. Reign threw a small device to D.O.B.; the charge detonator. D.O.B. caught it, and held it up. He counted silently to himself. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
BANG! The airlock rung like a gong, and crumpled slightly inward. A second later, Deadbeat's shoulder collided with deadly force against the seal. The door fell with ringing echo, and I rushed through the smoke and dust the explosion had thrown up. In the umbra of the cloud, I saw a staggering white-armored figure, and reversed the grip on my rifle. I delivered a stunning melee blow, and cracked not only the helmet, but the skull inside. I heard a sickening crack, and felt rather than saw the other white-armored fall. D.O.B. rushed through the gap, vehemently muttering "Go, go, go!"
We sprinted along the walkway, making incredible time toward the platform we'd visited earlier. As we got there, we could hear faint alarms coming from the city. If we could hear them this far away, then everyone in New Rapture must be awake. We quickly pinpointed the pneumatic tube that would take us up, and stepped into it. I was the last to step in, and I had other business. As my wife whooshed away on a tube of air, I leaned over the platform, and attached two C4 charges to the underside of the platform. Then I stepped into the tube, and was whisked away myself.
I have to admit, the urge to yell "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" was overpowering. I flipped around, upside down, and finally fell face-first onto the platform. I stumbled to my feet, and staggered drunkenly for a seconds before getting my bearings. Everyone was standing around a ladder that led to a hatch in the ceiling of the cavern. Mean Bitch was beating on it, and swearing prolifically.
"What's w *urp* rong?" I said, a little queasy.
Komodo turned to me. "The hatch is locked. We already tried blowing it once. No good."
Bitch gave a particularly good hammer, followed by a sentence that has engraved itself on my brain for sheer eloquence and grace of her four-letter words.
"Yes?! What do you want?!"
We all jumped; that voice had come from behind the hatch.
Bitch seemed at a loss for words, so I said some. "Pizza delivery!"
The voice changed, from annoyed, to delighted. "Well, why didn't you say so?! Come on in!"
The old fly-wheel style iron hatch began to spin, and after a second, it opened. Everyone looked up, to peer through the hatch. It burns to say it, but what I saw scared even me.
Imagine a man. Easy, right? Now, imagine that man's skin is rotting. Furthermore, imagine that you can see all of his veins, and every one of them looks like it's pulsing with electricity. That's how this guy seemed. Faded blue hair hung lankly from his balding head, and he stared at us with the innocence of childhood. "Well? Where's the pizza?"
I thought on my feet. "Uh... Your boss ordered some for everyone. We're supposed to deliver it to him. It's... It's a party!"
The face of what I guess was a Splicer brightened. "Really? Wow! Jack's a swell guy. Come on up."
His face moved, and Downbeat gave me a thumbs-up. We climbed up the ladder, into True Rapture. It was... Worn. That's the only way to put it. In stark contrast to New Rapture's sameness, True Rapture had character, to say the least. An odd bronze alloy formed the walls, ceilings, and floors. In places, sea plants and mollusks colonized the walls. Portholes, cracked and leaking in places, showed rippling water outside, and waving sea plants. True Rapture looked like it had been beautiful once, and it still was, but in a sad way. Grand and ornate benches lay twisted and bent all across the floors, and bits of statuary stood here and there. Electric arc lights flickered on the ceiling; intact tubes were few. Strange sounds echoed down the twisting halls.
After we looked around, we looked to the Splicer. The guy had definitely seen better days; his fancy clothes were torn and worn, and badly healed cuts and scratches dotted him. His eyes, though, were what scared me the most. They didn't just glow, they pulsed, a dark, hungry red. Still, he seemed a nice guy, as told by the sloppy smile that lit up his face. He raised his arms, and said "Sorry, but if I'd known you were coming, I'd have cleaned the place up! Jack's this way. It's a bit of a walk, so try to keep up!" He set off at a rollicking pace, skipping through the wreckage of the lost city. Suddenly, he stopped, and doubled back. He turned to us, and said "Sorry, by the way... My name's Jeff!"
I figured that now was a good time to leave; 'Jeff' obviously wasn't in the soundest state of mind. I was about to make some kind of excuse to leave, when I heard a deep thumping in the metal beneath my feet. It felt like... Footsteps. Coming from the other direction. Slowly, almost against our will, we turned, and saw another facet of True Rapture; what must have been Big Daddies.
If Jeff was almost disgustingly human, Big Daddies were a work in abstract. Ever seen one of those old-timey diving suits, all in one piece, and with that goofy helmet? Now, make the whole thing out of the same bronze alloy as the walls, and shove a caveman in there. That's getting close to a Big Daddy. Now, give that caveman enough anabolic steroids to supply the Major Leagues for a year, and mount a goddamn drill on their right arm. Finally, add glowing eyes like a robot, and now you've got a Big Daddy. Standing there behind us was two of them.
Jeff smiled when he saw them. "Hey! Bubbles and Frank!"
They turned towards him, and their yellow eyes flashed green.
He pointed to us. "Can you do me a favor? These guys have pizza for everyone. Yeah, I know, right? Jack ordered in! Could you help them get the pizza to Jack? I gotta stay here. Make sure no shinies get in."
I slumped. It looked like we had no choice. The Big Daddies nodded, and beckoned us with the non-drill hand. We started to follow, but something struck me. I walked back to Jeff, and handed him the detonator to the C4. I said "Hey, Jeff, use this. If any, um, 'shinies' come up to the platform that leads to the one below us, use this. It'll make them go away."
He stared in wonder at the detonator. "Wow, thanks! I owe you one."
I rejoined the death march with my teammates. The Big Daddies led us down corridor after corridor, up and down ornate staircases, across canals in the middle of streets, and over bridges that spanned bodies of water. Everywhere we looked, lights flickered and water dripped. My heart felt like it was shrinking and hardening. What on Earth had I gotten us into? Now we're headed to the leader of a bunch of crazies, and crazy + crazy just equals more crazy! He'll probably try to eat us, or grind us up and inject it or something... I looked out the window, and saw that we were moving through a ring that surrounded Rapture; evidently, were headed for one of the buildings in Inner True Rapture.
From time to time, we encountered other Splicers. They looked at us with curiosity, and, to my surprise, rarely with hostility. Some even started following us. They were a varied lot; some were even more degenerated than Jeff, some were better, and most were the same. But they were all slightly different. One woman had pulsing black lines writhe across her skin, while a short, bearded man had discernible bulges running through his veins. One seemed to be pumping magma through his body, as his capillaries glowed. They all wore clothing in some state of disrepair.
More and more Splicers congregated around us. Eventually, if it hadn't been for the Big Daddies, we would have been mobbed by them. However, the crowd was silent; they just stared. No shouted words, no questions... They just drank our strange faces in. I noticed something, after a while; the streets got nicer. No longer did random fauna and flora live on the walls, no windows leaked and dripped, and no things were flung about randomly. Hell, even the statuary had been put back together; glued, by the look of it. Eventually, we left the ring, and began to walk towards a huge 70's looking skyscraper that we could see through a roof window.
As we approached the building, I started looking at the walls. Advertisements adorned them, hawking wares like "Electro-Bolt: electrify your friends, and shock your enemies!" and "Incinerate: It may be cold outside, but you won't feel a thing!" These slogans were accompanied with old-timey drawings of people shooting lightning out of their hands, or just a swirl of flames around them. Good God... Where are we?
Eventually, we reached the base of the tower. The sign above the airlock said "Ryan Industries: Working for YOU!" However, someone had scratched through the 'you', and had substituted 'us'. The Big Daddies opened the door, and we stepped in. A female splicer sat at a desk in a lobby that wouldn't have seemed out-of-place above-world, like in some venerable law firm. The secretary, I guess, looked up. "Yes? Mr. Trades is very busy, so unless..." Her eyes focused on the Big Daddies, and widened. "Uh... Yes, of course." She pointed down the lobby, to a bank of elevators. "Top floor."
The Big Daddies pointed, and I frowned. Why aren't they following us? It dawned on me that probably one of these behemoths would overload an elevator, let alone two of them plus us. We separated into two teams and took two elevators up. The gilt frame opened up inside to reveal a view of Rapture through glass. We gaped as we rose higher... Higher... Higher... Until we reached the very peak of Rapture. We were in the tallest building in this entire city.
We stepped out of the elevator into an antechamber, and beheld a flurry of movement. Suddenly, there were eight Splicers pointing old-school Tommy guns at us. I stopped, and stared; not at the guns, that was old hat for me. What really made this surreal was that all eight were, to the last detail, identical. Now, I've seen twins, and I've seen unrelated people who could have passed for twins, but this was edging into clone territory. Each wore the exact same ragtag bunch of armor panels, each had a scar under their right eye... No! They were not all identical! Some had the scar under the left eye, not the right. But other than that, it was like a hall of mirrors.
One of them snarled. "Alright, pals, that's far enough. How did you get here, and what do you want?"
I stuttered for a second. I doubted the pizza trick would work on these sharpies. Eventually, Komodo saved me the trouble. "We were sent here by one of your lookouts. We're supposed to meet some guy called Jack."
Another just chuckled. "That's a good one; 'some guy called Jack'. You know what? Go right on ahead. This should be entertaining." They lowered their Tommy guns, and I gasped. Out of the eight, six's outlines began to waver, and they turned from opaque, to translucent, to transparent. They were gone. That left only two guards; one with a scarred right eye, one with left eye damage. They smiled deviously at us.
With some degree of trepidation, we stepped through the antechamber, and entered a large wooden door. What we entered into was an office in the lap of luxury; exquisite red-and-gold carpeting, carved oak furniture and walls, and a huge porthole looking over Rapture. At the end of the room sat a large desk, with an old computer monitor sitting on it. Behind the desk, was an executive chair, back to us. We waited for a second. Suddenly, a voice with a rich Chicago accent rang out from behind the desk. "Well, Iliya? Whatsa matter? Spit it out."
D.O.B. gulped. "Uh... Who?"
The chair squeaked as its occupant sat up straight, and spun around. When it did, we all stared at each other. Sitting in the chair was a man with dirty blond hair, combed away from his forehead. His eyes were pale, barely discernible against his whites. He wore a business suit sans jacket, with a red tie. He studied us for a few seconds, and a sneaky smile spilled across his face. "Well, well, well... Whatta we got here? Shinies, maybe? Well, I think I can fix this up good." He reached underneath the desk with his right hand, and came up holding a deadly cleaver, about a foot long. He jumped up, and slashed at us. Normally, this wouldn't have been any danger at all, since we were standing a good 19 feet away from his desk. However, this was different. The man's arm elongated, stretching, as it flew, until the cleaver was headed straight for our necks.
I acted on instinct. I ran toward the approaching arm, and contacted it below the wrist. The tentacle-like appendage started wrapping around me, the humming cleaver just missing Downbeat. As it circled my body, I reached out and grabbed the hand. Yanking the entire arm as hard as I could, I pulled the man clear over the desk. I was about to break his face, until I noticed that his left arm, the one that wasn't tangled around me, had grown. Not longer, like the other one, but larger. It was about as big around as a person, and if it contacted, I was a goner. I ducked, and the flying man flipped over me, and hit the opposite wall with a sickening crack, and he slumped at an unnatural angle. I had broken his spine.
We sat there for a moment, staring at the dead man. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, and rolled around for a second. "Oy! I need to lay off the shine." We watched in horror as his legs, which were pointing up in the air, swiveled and stretched, and he kind of flowed into a standing position. Both his arms shrunk back to normal size, and he dropped the cleaver. He grabbed his head in both hands, and twisted it upside down with a nasty sound. After spinning it all the way around on its axis, he shook it, and smiled. "Well, at least you ain't shinies; a shiny couldn't wipe his ass without a machine to do it for him." He held out a hand to me. "Name's Jack; Jack Ovall Trades."
I gripped it. "That can't be your real name. Jack of all trades?"
He grinned. "Ovall; Ovall!"
He looked around, and said "Well? You got names, or what?"
Well, we already threw down with an apparently immortal Chicago gangster, why not? "Daniel Travis, callsign Alpha" I said.
Downbeat shook hands with Jack. "Tyrone Owens. Call me Downbeat."
Mean Bitch stared at him, and sniffed "Kelsey Pfeiffer. Mean Bitch." Jack raised an eyebrow, and smirked. "Feisty, eh? I like that." Bitch flipped him off.
Komodo stood next to me, and also shook hands with Jack. "I'm Ellena DeVries. You can call me Komodo, too."
Jack's sharp eyes flicked to the golden band on her hand, and mine. He smiled.
Reigndown raised his hand for a high-five. "Chuck Adams, but the ladies call me Reigndown." Jack stared at his hand for a second, confused. Reigndown caught Jack's hand, and slapped into his own. Jack shrugged, and the turned to D.O.B.
"D.O.B." he said. Jack raised an eyebrow.
"Sure... So. I don't know you, you don't know me, and that's a problem." He did that weird stretchy-hand thing again, and pressed a button on his desk. "Janine! Light a fire under the cooks; party tonight! Rope in my boys, and tell them to be there, or be square, capiche?"
"Yes sir. Right away, sir."
Jack clapped his hands, and said "Well, that's a load off. You, my friends, are going to have some real Rapture hospitality. Up for it?"
I threw my head back, and laughed. "Sure. Why the hell not? It's not like today can get any stranger."
I was wrong.