<!-- --> The following is an alternative storyline for Bioshock 2. All rights to the Bioshock franchise are given to 2K and Irrational Games. This is merely a fan work. It should be warned that, as with the game, this story is aimed at a Mature audience (there will be references to sex, there is descriptive content of violent fights, and language is used as appropriate in the setting). The characters' views are not specifically my views, and I merely write them based upon what information can be gathered about them.
--> Also note, this was written about a year ago. I've put off a secondary draft due to not having time to rework the plot. That, and it already is far longer than I anticipated it would become.
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But I can still hear him sometimes, even though I know it's probably just wishful thinking.
"Daddy! Help me!"
"Eleanor..."
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_____The Return______
The bathysphere opened, and I could feel the aching of the city around me. So many lives, tossed away because of one man's idea; and I had helped him do it. I stepped out of the metal ball and looked up at the flickering lights. As my eyes darted to something moving in the water, I felt something squish against my boot.
I looked down, and it was a small teddy bear, soggy, with a small patch of mold on its one ear. It reminded me of Cassie, she had always been one to play with stuffed things. She made some for the others, it had made them happier... but I couldn't call what they had felt to be true happiness. No, I had to stop this, I needed to get to the Atlantic Express.
I tried to not look as I passed the masses of luggage, abandoned with the hope their owners had once had. The stench of foul water was think in the air, as if the very water itself died as it entered the hollowed halls of Rapture. There were so many scratches in the glass, faded stains from horrifying incidents brought about by the cruel madmen of the city.
The stairway was torn apart, with a burnt out couch and broken pillars of stone. I hastily looked up, but the security camera was gone; probably torn off hastily by one of the splicers.
I ducked through the hole and headed up the steps. I felt water pat on my head as I stepped up, and I could hear splashing of my shoes hitting water on the steps. As I reached the service area where they used to take people's luggage, I pinched my nose at the sight of a corpse. It looked at least five years old, but was still clearly fitting the look of a splicer. Somehow, a Little One had not come to take from this fellow yet.
That, or he just was already empty. I forced away the images in my mind, the emotions in my mind. For once, I wished just for a moment I could be emotionless like Fontaine or Ryan; so that the regret would stop boiling up in my stomach. I shook my head and kept moving onward, checking my pistol to make sure it was loaded.
I may have been feeling guilty, but my death would do nothing to help the Little Ones. "If Brigid Tenenbaum created part of this mess, then she needs to fix her share," I told myself; but part of me said Brigid Tenenbaum should have just run back to the bathysphere and gone back to her home and studies on the surface.
Nothing would have made me happier than to yell "to hell with this place" and just walk out, but I couldn't do it. I had heard the new stories, it had even happened to one of my neighbor's daughters. I wouldn't let it go on any further. I had heard inklings from those like I that had made it out that someone new was in charge. That somehow, Rapture was rebuilding itself as it was just beginning to finally die off; I intended to stop such a horrible idea.
I had asked Dogenhaven if he would come with me, but he and anyone else I contacted simply ignored me if I brought the idea to mind. My own assistant, who I could have left to die, wouldn't even come with me to do what was right in the eyes of God; but it seemed as if God, Himself, had left Rapture to fall to ruin for condemning Him along with everything else that was right with the world.
We had been such fools, thinking we were making a better way of living. What we did was live in a fairytale, and there was no happy ending in sight if I didn't act now.
I began thinking I had taken a wrong turn down a hall when I froze at the sight; a Gatherer's Garden.
The neon lights around it flickered, a few of them out for good due to being broken open. I stepped closer, and saw the cracked metal images of what my Little Ones were supposed to be; not what they had become. I could see their faces, all of them looking at me. All of them, either dead or trapped here for all eternity, never aging a day.
I had to fight the urge to not pull the gun out now, to just end the miserable existence I had created for myself. I had done so much harm, in the pursuit of a demonic science that never should have been created. Of all the people to escape Rapture, I was the least worthy. There had been so many others, even the Little Ones, who could have so much more to do with the rest of their lives. Instead, they had been left behind like old memories, photographs of a time long since past.
I could feel my hand fingering around the gun, then stopped myself. I had to keep moving, I had to. Yet, something inside me made myself think.
The plasmids the splicers were so addicted to using were powerful, and only took affect in addictive form if used consistently for long periods of time. I could take one vial, just in case my time were to be so dire as to need it. And yet... I could not stop myself from finding it fitting, that I could have to become part of what I hated just to destroy it.
I took the gun out of my pocket, and smashed the glass on the machine. The vial came out, and was heavier than I expected. I put it in my pocket, and promised myself that I would come out again, I would see Peter again; I would see my son again.
As I began to step away from the Gatherer's Garden, and I heard the familiar thudding noise of a pair of boots. I slowly turned around, and stepped towards the balcony. I could see the Big Daddy, and the Little One riding on his back as he stepped into the room. The Little One looked up at me, raising an eyebrow. The Big Daddy stopped, and let the Little One get to her feet. As she walked up the steps, he slowly followed; groaning gutterally.
"Come on Sir Bubbles!" she said, skipping up the stairs ahead of him.
"What is your name, child?" I asked, not thinking.
The Big Daddy suddenly was only inches away from her, glaring at me from inside his metal suit of armor. I could smell his anger, and knew that I could never stand up to one as powerful as him.
The Little One walked past me, humming a song as she stepped towards a body lyng against the wall.
"It's an angel Sir Bubbles!" she exclaimed, and I could feel my heart break as she stuck her tool into the corpse. I saw the adam begin to flow in, and grimaced. The Big Daddy began moving so as to block my way to even seeing her, moving even faster if I barely moved.
I needed something to stop him, something to distract him long enough to give me a chance to- I noticed several splicers beginning to rise up along the stairway. They acted as if I wasn't there, so I pulled myself further into the nook broken into the wall.
As they began to near, the Big Daddy turned and glared at them. I could see they weren't afraid, they were too insane to know fear. I looked at them, all disfigured as if something to scare children in the night as they try to sleep. They weren't human anymore, if anything was human still in them it would have made them stop by now. No, they were nothing more than empty shells where souls had lived, and those souls had been the currency Ryan must have paid the devil for Rapture to live on, even if he was dead.
The splicers began taunting the Big Daddy, and he whirled his drill for a moment to make his intentions quite clear. As they got closer, the Little One suddenly yelled as a pair of splicers flanked from behind the Big Daddy. His roar was like a belowing lion, and he charged at them. I hastily drew my gun on instinct, and shot one splicer straight in the head.
They all turned, and I quickly tried to stuff the vial full of adam into my pocket.
"She's got adam on her! Get her!" the one splicer yelled, and I then shot again, hitting him in the chest; yet that only seemed to knock him back slightly.
A woman came at me with a knife, but I managed to smack her away and shoot her. The man I had shot tried to grab the Little One, but I shot him in the back and then he finally collapsed. The Little One looked afraid, yet confused at the fact I was protecting her.
The last one came running at me, but the Big Daddy's drill came plowing into his mid-section and sent his remains whirling off into the distance. Then suddenly I felt a tightening at my throat, the Big Daddy was using telekenisis.
"No Daddy! She's a friend!" the Little One yelled, making him stop from puncturing my stomach; mere inches from ending my life.
He seemed to moan a reply. "She's not a bad man Sir Bubbles, she's not..." I fell to my feet, nearly falling over.
I leaned back against the wall, and looked up at the Big Daddy. His drill as still poined at my chest, and he growled something; most likely a warning or insult.
I looked down at the Little One, and she smiled at me, then began following him again. I began following when she gestured for me to come. She looked familar, but I did not try to think of who she could be. So many little girls had been tested, and the ones that lived.. no, survived, not lived. They had stopped living when I had... I had...
I threw up, my stomach not able to take anymore tension from my mind. As I coughed and tried to stand, I felt a cold little hand touch mine.
"Don't worry, Daddy and I know where to go. You'll see," she said, grinning.
"And where is that.. exactly?" I asked, letting her lead me on due to my mind being scattered.
"You'll see. It's a surprise!" she said to me.
