#I HAVE COMMITTED SO MANY SINS | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vvatchword · 2 years

Text

Over the space of an eternity, he became aware of a faint, rhythmic humming. It took a moment for him to realize that this was blood rushing up into his head. An invisible fist squeezed his heart.

“Daddy.”

His eyes flew open. The blackness was so complete he could have drowned in it. He slapped numbly against his helmet; after four or five tries, he finally tripped the switch for his lamp. It lit up a section of cracked tile. Beyond that was only shadow.

He listened closely. He couldn’t tell whether he had heard the word or imagined it.

Did it matter?

He rolled over, his muscles protesting, and groped for a purchase on the tile. His hands and feet were dead weights and his fingers and knees wouldn’t bend. As he struggled to find some command of his legs, he rolled over too far. With a sickening lurch, he tumbled into deep, scummy seawater.

The puddle was as cold as the ninth level of hell and brought him roaring out, slapping indiscriminately in every direction until he heaved himself onto solid ground. All the memories of the shark-eyed woman and her cohorts swept back to him in a wave. Then he remembered Sister, her chalky face… the goon… the gun…

Pain jabbed behind his eye and lanced from one temple to the other.

No time.

Com

part

mentalize.

He struggled to his feet. His reflection shone back at him from dark water. He was wearing his diving helmet.

Oh shit.

Oh shit!

Now he remembered! He’d gone diving! He’d dived! Fuck! Where was he? How long had he been out? How much oxygen did he have?

He rotated his cuffs. Left arm normal—one red tube, one neon-blue, both diving into the inside of his elbow; red at 0, blue at 100%. It was his right arm that was shocking: depth meter shivered at 3,280 meters, and as for his available air, the little dial pointed to 75%.

Shit! Shit! Shit! He was at record-breaking depths here, and at 75% he should’ve at least found the object of his mission. He couldn’t play loosey-goosey with his timing. He’d fucking die.

Wait. Wait wait wait.

What had he come down here for, again?

Sister.

That’s right, Sister! Gone! In trouble!

He closed his eyes and sought her presence. To his horror, he felt nothing but the squeeze on his heart. He tried to think her out, praying she was thinking of him, too. It had worked in the past, when his head had been cottony and he had stumbled to the wrong vent.

She did not answer.

He took a deep breath and shouted. At least, his intent had been to shout. The roar that blasted out of him shivered the water like a thunderclap, bounced off of the walls, echoed away, and away, and away…

A little loud, but thank god. He needed loud.

He waited.

Then, quietly, the answer came to him. It was sharp and short, like a polite cough in the back of a theater. And then, just as quickly as he had sensed it, it was gone.

He sagged. She was alive. They hadn’t killed her yet. But there was no time to lose.

No time at all.

75% O2.

Sister.

Guns.

He lumbered off into the darkness and immediately sank into water up to his thigh. He flailed and slipped and stamped one foot down, then the other, and rocked upright. The floor had buckled dramatically; soft as sponge, and slick on the grades, and the water murky on top of all that. Like ice-skating without skates.

Wait. When had he ever ice-skated?

He slapped his helmet until his ears rang. No time to think about that.

Sister!

He staggered, slid, threw his arms out, and sidestepped across the room. Tingling heat built in his chest and throbbed at the tips of his fingers. At least his hands and feet were starting to feel real again.

As he caught himself on the banister, the lights overhead flickered on and blazed liquid agony straight through his eyeballs.

He slapped his hands over his faceplate with a howl. Imprinted on the backs of his eyelids was an inverse image. A spacious alcove framed a stylized letter “A” couched in a blazing sun.

He slowly parted his fingers.

“Hrroooh,” he said.

He sloshed in a slow circle. This was not the area he remembered seeing last.

Live electricity sparked from gashes in the walls. Waterfalls poured from the ceiling, and the faux plants were slimy-black where they hadn’t disintegrated outright. And the mold! The place was coated with mold so thick he could’ve cut it off in slabs and built a mattress.

Shit.

A bad dream. Probably the worst bad dream he’d ever seen.

He took a deep breath.

One. Two. Three.

He let the breath out.

He clomped up the staircase. He was already starting to feel better. Still stiff, back like an ironing board, but his muscles were starting to squeak along in some semblance of normalcy, and the pain felt pretty good, if he were honest. It was going to be all right; lots of bad dreams turned out all right. He was at 75% O2. Not bad, good enough to return to the boat. Sister was alive, check. Should get her to the boat, too. Jewels was there, on the boat. Jewels, good old… whoever? Whatever. But Jewels was… jewels were?… good, definitely.

Good feelings about that word.

Great feelings about the boat.

The lights flickered on again. He reflexively covered his face. This time, the inverse image printed on his eyelids was a vent: a nickel starburst framing a gaping void.

One minute he was standing on the staircase. The next minute, he had jammed his faceplate up against the vent and started hammering his fist like a madman. The wall shivered with each blow, raining rotten chunks of plaster.

He hesitated mid-swing. Dropped his fist. Big swathes of intact wallpaper jiggled like gelatin for a good minute after he’d finished. He could see using the dream-sight, but not far. The vent was full of rubble. No little girl could possibly crawl through that.

Wait a minute.

He stood still. Breathed. Checked his wrist. 73%.

Big breath in.

Count to three.

Big breath out.

Again.

He’d clearly fucked up somehow, and bad. Problem: he wasn’t yet sure how exactly. He felt like he was groping in the dark, feeling shapes he had forgotten names for. Like someone was shouting to him and he could only hear their tone of voice, and that tone was, “You fucker! You dumb fucking asshole!”

Sister.

A warm cloud floated over him. The alarms jangling up and down his spine faded off reluctantly.

Yeah. Sister. That was the ticket.

Find Sister. Save Sister.

He jammed his right hand into the drill, tilted it back and checked the fuel gauge. Nearly full.

Save Sister.

He lunged up the stairs. The wood smashed flat and spongy beneath his boots. A big groove, fresh and black, had already smashed the stairs down, crushing the wood down to the stone foundation.

That explained it. He had broken down and dragged himself, that’s all. Then he got fixed. He’d been fixed before. They’d practically had to sew his arm back onto his shoulder once. What was a shot to the head?

Take the bullet out.

Sew the head back together.

Screw it back on.

Follow the rut back to Sister.

He passed a constellation of plate-sized craters in the wall, their outlines crusted with mineral buildup. Someone had slashed paint all over the walls, vividly white in his headlamp. A dozen handprints in peeling paint, the heels pressed together, like butterflies for Sunday School. Words had been splashed on the wall, too—some of them still fresh. A big triangle had been drawn over one bare patch. Lots of triangles. Lots of letters. He barely noticed that they were there.

Above the staircase, an ample arch, then the hall. He followed the rut dragging down the right-hand corridor.

73%.

A pile of furniture hulked in a corner, slimy black armchairs and chairs splayed on swollen legs with drooping seats. More craters in the walls, obscured by salt and shadow. A steam room, a pool slowly filling with seawater.

Whispers down the hall.

He froze.

Sister!

He hooted and slapped his hip.

He splashed down a new corridor, this one narrow with low ceilings and pinstriped wallpaper. These were private rooms for massages, although how he knew this, he couldn’t remember. Water-worn wallpaper peeled off in sheets; heaps of silt and melting carpet filled the doorways. He brushed by a fluorescent light hanging by a looped wire, swinging back and forth like a noose. He saw a shadow on the wall in the right corridor, lit up by pink-white light.

A nicotine craving hit him out of nowhere. His mouth tightened, pinching down for the familiar soft shape in his mouth, and felt nothing.

He forced his mind away—no use thinking about that, not here, not now—and instead, he started thinking about Sister again. This time the flicker of her presence was a little stronger—faint, like picking up a faraway radio signal and hearing the shadow of one’s favorite song. His heart throbbed, painful but reassuring.

He swung around the corner.

A vending machine leaned against the wall, flanked by two cartoonish girls as pink as princesses. There was a sign, but the words hurt his eyes, so he looked away. A handful of glowing vials gleamed from inside, but he could barely see what they were; the glass had been beaten until it was opaque. He sagged when he realized the whispering sound was actually some internal mechanism of the machine’s.

On the wall, something bright caught his eye. Its color was brilliant against the wallpaper, flesh-colored in the light. He dragged closer. More words and shapes slathered over and over in unmistakably fresh paint.

The bad feeling was back—the feeling that said something was very wrong with him. This was probably why he actually tried to read the painted words. He had to close one eye and read it one letter at a time, and at the end, his head was splintering.

“SISTER IN DEMETER”

To its left, someone had drawn a triangle. No, several triangles, all different sizes.

He whirled around. Triangle on the wall with an arrow pointing, all in the same fresh white paint. Triangle on a piece of upholstery. Triangle painted on the ceiling. He had passed how many of these? He had passed them and not seen them.

He touched one of the letters. It pooled around his finger. He drew his finger back. A spot of white. Its cleanness and clarity startled him. He turned his hand from side to side. The fog was starting to part a little, and in its wake was a hell of a headache.

Sister, came the oafish thought, something like reassurance. Sister.

His hand had started shaking. He turned it over again.

There, printed on the back of his left glove, a triangle. Faded, yes. Scarred, yes. But perfectly legible.

A buzz popped on in his brain and suddenly his whole body went rigid. His heart ramped up. He panted but he couldn’t breathe deeply enough to fill his lungs. Someone was coming for him and when they got there they were going to steal something he could never get back.

No! No! No!

He jerked backward like he could outrun his own hand. But he’d forgotten about the vending machine and slammed into it. The machine’s audio kicked in, but it had pitched down into a guttural demon thrum.

“Are you as good as—are you as good as—”

With a roar, he whirled on the machine and shoved it through the wall. The wood popped apart like wet cardboard and wallpaper peeled free. The machine crashed through the floor with a screech of metal against metal. A muffled crash, a loud splash, and just like that, he was lost in the dark again. All that was left was emergency lighting struggling down adjacent hallways.

He slapped his hand down, wiping the white on his hip, and whirled around.

70%.

Sister.

Just Sister.

Only Sister.

Sister was good. Sister was all he needed.

Sister.

He jogged back down the hall, the walls shuddering as he passed. Here, the floor was flooded, and he could only tell the drag marks by how they felt underfoot. His dream-sight nosed ahead of him; around this corner were the squash courts with their placards still advertising available rates, and here was a hallway lined with stacks of chairs all the way to the ceiling, and here a number of sagging armchairs had been lined across the hallway and lashed together with stanchion belts. He kicked through them like they were nothing, rotten fabric and rotten wood and rotten bone.

68%.

He tramped up a set of stairs, past a restaurant and a club. Big holes in the floor, strewn with seaweed and what looked disconcertingly like clothing. His brain was still buzzing, and the pressure built up behind his eyes.

Without warning, the buzzing screamed up behind his eyes and all the lights and colors blew out—and for a second, there were bright colors and light—and with it all came a lightheadedness so violent he didn’t know if he were still standing up. He could smell—what was it? Gunpowder? Body odor? Rot?—and against his skin, the air pressure and clean cold breeze from a different time.

A woman backed up in the restaurant, her arms up. He could feel the tightness of her chest and hear the echo of gunfire and bootsteps. She was in her stocking feet. She was calling out: “Please, don’t bring guns in here. Please, we’re just trying to…”

Next second, he was blinking against the wall, and for the first time, he was struck by the silence. No buzzing. No light.

Ghost!

He leaned inside the restaurant. No woman, just the familiar craters running from the floor up to the ceiling. He did remember this place… from somewhere. Sometime. A good-dream, definitely. The room had been so full he hadn’t been able to see the opposite wall. Now he could see the whole row of windows gleaming in the dark, only slightly lighter than the rooms themselves.

Wait.

What had he been doing again?

He had to stop and think about it. Lord. It hurt his head like the devil.

Oh! Yes!

Sister!

He marched off past the club, looked through to see another makeshift barricade. Dining and masseuse chairs lay on their sides, lashed together with rotten rope. A Garand lay quietly on the bar, chamber open, slime blackening the stock.

67%.

He should be thinking of emerging again about now, stepping on the diving chamber, lifting up, up, up, to the safety of the surface…

He had just passed another restaurant when a woman screamed.

His gait hitched only a second.

That wasn’t a ghost.

He launched off. In the dark, he could see the luminous white mark on his index finger, the slash of white on his thigh.

The scream howled up, higher and higher, half pleading, half agony.

“I swear to God! We’re not splicers! I don’t even like Sinclair! I swear to God!”

The scream cut off. A sharp gurgling cough.

Another woman’s voice leaped up to fill the vacuum, chattering, breathy, stupid.

“We ain’t done nothing wrong!” she said. “We ain’t done nothing to Lamb! We like the Family! We was going there to join right after this! I swear… I swear! I h-haven’t spliced. I haven’t! There’s nothing in me!”

He crashed around the corner. Half of the wall came with him. The hallway opened into a sprawling atrium. Paintings hung like closed windows, so furry with mold that they could no longer be seen. Triangles had been painted in every frame, “SISTER IN DEMETER” across every wall, a phrase more remembered than read. His eyes panged.

At the center of the atrium, a magnificent arch framed a grand balcony and a window beyond. There was a sign arched over the entryway, but he jerked his eyes away—there were words there—the words were bouncing—god he fucking hated words he fucking hated reading—

Fracturing the window-light was a pillar carved into the shape of a tree. He remembered that stone tree—the tree hung with crystal fruit—the bar—the woman in white—that Moneybags guy—camera—she was going to pick up the camera—so much booze—real cigarettes.

Fuck, he could use a cigarette.

A woman in an ill-fitting diving suit slumped over the balcony, her helmet rolled up against the banister. Dark beads dropped from her hidden face. Above her, her friend hovered in midair, hands grappling at her throat, hacking, coughing, spitting. One shoe dangled from her right foot; wiggled, waggled, fell three feet to the floor. She wore a man’s breeches and dress shirt and her arms were white up to her elbows.

Not a ghost. Nobody held her. She just floated there.

He skidded to a stop. The hovering woman whipped to look at him and her eyes were huge, rolling, horrible.

“No,” she said. “Don’t—”

Then her head snapped to the side and she flopped to the floor like a shed jacket.

A silence had come over him. It probably only lasted ten seconds, but he felt as though he regarded some hidden predator, and that it regarded him.

It felt like someone he should know.

“Hoooo?” he said.

Two invisible hands grabbed under his breastplate and yanked. He lurched forward, one helpless step after another, but he wasn’t walking—he was pedaling in place—faster and faster and faster—heels skipping against the wood, then dragging—

He jammed one heel down and then the other, leaned backward hard, drill roaring to life in his fist. He rammed his free hand into the wall on his left, bashed the drill into the wall on his right. But he didn’t slow down: he sped up. He flew free of the corridor—his left hand hit air. Faster and faster and faster, plowing two enormous furrows into the floor with the corridor booming down behind him like a chain of dominoes.

He slammed through the two corpses, punched through the balustrades like they were matchsticks, and soared into empty space. He had remembered a grand staircase leading down from the balcony. There wasn’t one anymore. Just two partial steps at the bottom, and the rest blown to hell, a jumbled heap of masonry and steel.

The lightheadedness hit him again, the lights smeared, and for a breathtaking moment, he lost his mind.

Ghosts whirled below him in evening dress, packed wall to wall, layered over and passing through one another. Silvery and staticky and fading in and out, sometimes with the faintest blush of color; women’s gowns flaring out in dead colors to dead music; the twinkle of long-lost gold. Rushing up to meet him were a cacophony of alien voices heard as though through static.

Oh, we are so happy to be will we see Mr. Ryan tonight maybe I should just set the story straight—

Then the hands dropped him.

A sickening heaviness as gravity took over. He slammed into a mid-level bough sprouting from the stone tree. The branch reeled on its joint, glass leaves clashing together. He grappled madly for purchase, but both his arms and the branch were slick with filth, and he pawed madly, helplessly, sliding, sliding, inch by inch, until at last, he clutched at air.

Muscle memory kicked in. He flung his left arm down, and the floor trembled—an updraft heaved up in a mad effort to cushion his fall.

It was too late. The whole ton of him crashed down upon a blockade. The sandbags were soaked, heavy as stone, and punched the oxygen tanks straight into his back. He howled, heels thrown up in the air, sparks flashing behind his eyelids. Up burst a cloud of shrapnel—glass and rusty nails and rotten wood and god-knew-what-else. His fingers twitched on the drill’s lever two or three times and it skipped off the floor and yanked his arm out of its socket.

He rolled across the floor and thudded anticlimactically against the bar. A line of empty bottles rocked back and forth. He coughed and rocked upright. The ghosts were gone. The floor was empty and dark and he was alone.

Sucking air, he rolled up to his knees. At least the stiffness had mostly faded; his joints bent, his legs lifted, he could feel his fingers. Leaning on the bar, he thrust himself up onto his feet. One good yank on his elbow and his arm popped back into socket. The discomfort shot his awareness into crystal clarity.

The window was the only source of light, and it wasn’t much—like the blush before dawn. Outside the window, a coral garden wavered, sparkling with bioluminescence. He turned in circles, sweeping shadows away with the dream-sight. Detritus, dashed furniture, broken glass, twisted rebar, nothing more. He jerked on the drill’s lever once, twice. It roared up, throbbing in his fist, before whining down again.

Nothing.

So he slammed his drill into the floor and roared until the puddles shivered.

The sound faded off. No answer but that of wood crumbling, glass and masonry rolling to standstills, the steady plink, plink, plink of water on stone.

And a scratchy sound on the ceiling.

He tilted back as far as his stiff back would allow. It took his dream-sight to see what he had missed before.

Up in the glittering boughs of the tree, among the apples and faceless cherubim, a spidery shape drooped. It wore the patched remnants of three diving suits all sewn together and an oversized helmet. An oxygen tank had been lashed down to the body with rope. All odds and ends: scraps of leather from bathysphere seats, men’s dress belts, and neat stitches from fishing wire. Everything was blue in that room except for the single red point in the helmet.

A mind-splitting scream rent the air.

He slammed back into the bar. The scream was a dizzying, ear-blowing, visceral sound. It blew the fog out of his brain and all the alarms came back, plus new ones he hadn’t heard before.

The realization jolted him.

Sister.

“She is my daughter.”

He flung his arms open and bellowed. There was no logic left in him, only waves and waves of overwhelming relief.

Her answering scream echoed through the room over and over. The red light blazed up; his vision smeared. Glasses shuddered under the bar, then began popping—first only one or two, then every glass in the cases, every bottle on the bar. Shapes shifted in his mind, lifting toward the light. He could almost see them.

She plunged down the trunk.

She was… coming a bit fast.

And… she was a bit tall. Maybe six feet?

His bellow wobbled off into a croak. Hadn’t she been, you know… small?

His confusion deepened when she smashed him through the bar.

He plowed shoulder-first through lines of rotten furniture. He flung his drill arm out and it skipped, gouging divots in the tile. A babble keened up in his brain in a voice that wasn’t his.

How could you how could you how dare you I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE

The monster’s weighted boots jammed against his chest as he skidded: black, dripping, and long-legged, a spider with Sister’s mind. Sister’s syringe had been lashed around her left wrist, and a harpoon three feet long strapped to her right arm.

Her harpoon swept up against the painted heaven.

The harpoon was falling on him. The needle was falling on him. The needle. The needle the needle the needle the needle the

His brain popped.

There was a protocol for feelings. Feelings could be Good and Bad. “Good” was for Sister and for the doctors in the Red Place who gave him Blue Stuff and Red Stuff and for the technicians who patched his suit. “Bad” was for things that hurt him or Sister—bullets, blows, explosions. He had operated in this dichotomy for a long, long time. It was comfortable. It was cozy.

So the sensation of real anger was shockingly sinful, dreadfully powerful, carnally thrilling: some ancient, screaming, swearing, swinging monstrosity blazing from the impacts of a thousand injustices, a thousand traumas, a thousand unanswered prayers. He was dazzled by its brightness, by its power, and most of all, by its owner: for it was his, and his alone. His fury would fight for him, his fury would die for him, and he loved it, he loved it, he loved it!

They were still skidding over the floor when Sister’s harpoon punched down. With speed he didn’t know he had, he slapped the shaft aside, rolled with the impetus of his blow—his terrible weight now brought against her—and flung the barb through the floor.

They rolled free of each other, he rolling onto his feet and thrusting himself aside with an updraft, she with a long-legged spring and a hard yank on the harpoon. All the hair stood up on the back of his neck and he barely ducked in time before she boomed off a bolt of lightning. The far wall blew apart with a shuddering roar and little tongues of electricity licked at him through the dust.

The jolts felt good.

Pain was good!

Her babbling was still racing through him, words he could feel like a second heartbeat.

I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate

And to his shock—a shock that was sinfully delightful—words of his own crawled out of some dark recess. They began as a whisper and rolled up louder and louder and louder:

how

how dare you

How dare you.

How dare you!

He screamed, beating his drill against the floor.

She screamed, beating her harpoon against the wall.

They flung themselves at each other. She slung arms of lightning at him; he slung his fist—much harder than he had to—and wrenched half of the bar apart by the mere will of his mind. The bar-top launched between them, the lightning boomed into it and the whole thing flipped over him and shattered against the wall. The shockwave stole his breath.

Good!

She sprang across the room—she was so nimble, so quick—

jack jump over the candle stick

—and he was bashed from behind.

Jack be nimble!

Tables and chairs. She was hitting him with furniture. A booth cartwheeled into him, bursting into clouds of splinters and nails and rotten stuffing. He stumbled, but he did not fall. He hooted at her, something like laughter, and snapped his fingers. Droplets hissed on the palm of his hand and the little ports on the inside of his glove burned silver, and out spidered electricity, electricity like anticipation, electricity like thirst. He crashed through a pinwheeling table in a fog of splinters and flung his hand up and lightning boomed out of him. Half of the wall collapsed in a wave of plaster.

She flickered through the onslaught in puffs of violet and carmine and flung her arm out in response. Invisible hands yanked his electric arm sideways and he blasted an arc of electric destruction across the wall, across the ruins of the staircase, but he flung his other arm up with a howl and popped off a neater, thinner bolt of light.

This one struck home. With a screech, red light flickering, she missed a step, a foot slid, she solidified—solid, blacker than black—her arms and legs seized up—she tumbled and hit the floor—

like dove hunting

He stalked toward her, snapping his fingers. Light arced from thumb to forefinger to the gap in his palm. He could roll the light

like cigarettes

She recovered fast, rolling up awkwardly to all fours, then to her feet, the oversized burden of her helm dragging her down as she stumbled away. He did not speed up. He snapped his fingers and the light that spat out was orange. He was starting to burn red-hot. He was burning, burning, burning, molten inside and out, and with mad, curdling bloodlust he chased her with his eyes.

He didn’t have to run.

She would come to him.

Static hissed on in his helmet. He didn’t notice it at first.

“Eleanor!”

Sister jerked aside like a startled fish and slammed against the wall. She had jumped up onto the stage area—

a woman with her hands trembling on either side of the mike, her eyes closed as she surrendered to one rapturous note

—which was framed by a single sheet of glass. The mirror shivered as Sister dashed herself against it before drunkenly zig-zagging into a thicket of music stands.

Static crackled.

“Eleanor, where are you?”

He marched toward her, dragging his drill against the tile. He filled the mirror one step at a time. She was scrabbling to her feet, pawing at her helmet, hissing helplessly. The babble was gone. All that was left was the static.

“What are you doing? Where’s your video feed?”

He thundered toward her. She took off like a

little bird trying to fly. The cat crouched

and flopped back to the floor. Something was off, something was wrong. It was a hurt that ran through her whole body. He could feel it, same way she could feel him burning.

“I’m sorry we have to do this, Eleanor. Just be honest with us. That’s all we ask. It’s all we ever ask.”

They smashed into the mirror together. Fissures lanced, spiderwebbed, showered them with shards, and he yanked her back and slammed her against the mirror again, again, again, until the wall was naked stone and they were powdered in silver. Every blow throbbed through him and his heart was crushing, crushing, crushing in an invisible vise.

“We can tell you’re up to something, Eleanor. Your heart is racing.”

His burning fist was knotted up under her throat. He could feel her fear like ice in his own stomach. She was afraid. She was afraid and he loomed over her and he could feel the fear like silver trembling, like

the white belly rolled, the tail lashed, the jaws gaped

“Just turn on the camera.”

He shoved her against the wall, dragged her across it, hit every blade of glass and crooked nail and he could feel everything, even the weight and heat of his own arm. She stabbed stupidly at him, but with the little needle she’d borne as a child; it snapped against the lip of his helmet and flipped into the false twilight.

He hurled her after it.

She banged onto the floor and rolled up against the window. Where his hand had gripped, the metal of her helmet burned scarlet. The fabric had burned away at her throat. He could see the raw flesh, blood. His knuckles were burning with her blood.

“I’m sending the others. I’m sorry, Eleanor. This is for your own good.”

A click.

He marched on her, shot through with agonies that weren’t his own, steaming in the chilled air. His index finger played with the lever in the drill, which spun loosely, lightly, over and over.

He could have driven it down below her helmet into the unguarded belly. Instead, he squatted down before her. She swung the harpoon, but she was too close, too uncoordinated. The shaft gonged him on the helmet. He let it. His fingers folded around it. She yanked back, but her strength was nothing compared to his. She was crumpling in front of him, her knees folding under her as she twisted away.

Slowly, he stood. He dragged her up with him. Her hand clamped onto his wrist, then clapped onto his viewplate. Fingers of light licked across the glass. She shook with the effort.

Pathetic.

How dare you.

Harpoon locked in his fist, he whipped her through the air in a perfect arc and dashed her against the floor. Her elbow snapped and her shoulder dislocated and

his heart exploded.

In a day full of agonies, this was the worst: like someone had fired off a car battery in his chest. He heard screaming, an unbelievable screaming, but he couldn’t tell whether it was him or her or both. All he knew was that one second, he was upright, and the next, he was lying on his back, spasming like he had just hugged a live wire.

He seized over and over. He chewed the insides of his mouth until he choked on blood. Blackness and haze curled in on the edges of his vision. He fought it back, wild as a beast—not here, not like this—but desire wasn’t enough.

He blacked out.

When he drifted back into awareness, she was looming over him. The side of her helmet was dented in, the glass in the porthole shattered. Through it, he could see a single black eye, strands of hair, dark circles. Her arms hung limply at her sides. He’d broken them both. And some ribs. There was worse inside. He could feel that, too.

If she had wanted fear, she didn’t get it; he felt nothing.

He lay there and breathed. Deep breaths. Counted to three. Deep breaths. He cast his will down into his arms and found only meat. She stood broken against the light. No words. No feelings. He was starting to feel all of her fractures. Shouldn’t she be better by now? Shouldn’t she have healed up? He remembered bullets blowing through her and the wounds closing up behind them.

She set her boot on the throat of his helmet and leaned down.

Why are you here?

He stared up at her blearily.

I found out the truth, you know. I read all about how we were made. You’re a lie.

In the wake of his anger, there was nothing to return to. No Good, no Bad; no diving; no Jewels; no boat. He was floating in limbo.

Suchong and Alexander made you. You never loved me. They made you love me. Love that’s not a choice isn’t love at all.

He wanted to be angry again but the spark was gone.

I can’t kill you right now. I’m tired.

Her boot grated off of his throat. There was so much damage. She shouldn’t have been able to stand.

If I see you again, I’ll kill you. Go die somewhere else.

Behind her, a concussive burst. Another long, leggy specter materialized out of the shadow. Then another burst, and another. Spidery shapes drifted out of the darkness, bent below the hideous weights of their helmets and tanks. Such tiny bodies, such massive burdens.

I killed it, said Sister. Sinclair was planning to use it for something. I don’t know what.

From the dark came metallic scraping, clicking, clanking. Shades surrounded him. Red winks in the blackness.

Daddy, said a not-Sister. It’s Daddy.

They stood around him and stared. They were all whispering: Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.

Not your Daddy, Sister said. Her voice was sullen. My Daddy.

They trembled altogether. A dozen alien feelings welled over him before he realized that they weren’t his. There was hatred, there was anger, there was suspicion, but the common thread was the adoration. It was as tactile as the air he breathed. If he hadn’t been so drained, he would have taken each feeling and looked at them a while. Maybe there was a new one that could belong to him.

Stop it, Sister said. He’s no father. He doesn’t love anyone. He’s a trained animal.

Look! He’s still alive, said a not-Sister eagerly.

Not long. Look at his heart. Sister turned. I need ADAM.

A pop, a wet red cloud, and she was gone. He was left lying there, breathing, waiting. The shades looked at each other, looked back at him, and one by one, dissipated. Only one remained. She leaned over him, head cocking slowly. He could now feel Sister through his whole body without even trying. But this strange new not-Sister—all he could feel was what she radiated. And what she radiated was an intense jealousy and something like love.

She turned to look at the ocean. Like Sister, she had a smaller needle lashed around her left arm. There was a baby bottle screwed onto it. Without looking down, she unscrewed the bottle, procured a plunger from one of her dozens of pockets, capped the bottle. She tossed it to his side. Something red and shining splashed inside of it.

A pop, a glowing red cloud, and she was gone.

There was nothing left to do but wait for his life to return to him. From far away, he could feel Sister healing. This was comforting.

Good.

He breathed.

This, too, was good.

Deep in his belly, the anger uncurled. He breathed, and the flame swelled up. He cupped it in the darkness of his body and watched it tremble.

How dare you.

UPRISING: BLACK SCRAPBOOK HUB

#bioshock #fanfiction #vvatchword #i have committed so many literary sins here #The Dramatic List of Hard Returns drives me crazy and I should stop that shit #whatever #I want someone to see it #look at it #look #some guys fight and shit

6 notes · View notes