Archive of Our Own

It was an ordinary lazy afternoon when Blade's usual binge watching of trashy tv shows was interrupted by the sound of the firehouse's landline.

“Blades, you have a holoform, you could have picked it up.” Dani answered the phone. “Hello?”

“This is Special Agent William Fowler. I am calling to inquire on the whereabouts of High Tide. He has missed several check ins, and Optimus has informed me that you may know where he hangs out. I also carry a warning. Don't go out on the water. Stay away from the shore. Until High Tide comes back, I want Blades to stay grounded and on dry land. Do not attempt to go to the mainland. In a few minutes, the ferry will close.”

“Wait, what!”

Fowler hung up on Dani.

Dani’s phone dinged. A text message warned her not to go onto beaches or waterfronts due to potential algae blooms. It was a nice try, but the weather wasn't suited for a severe bloom.

“Does this apply to us?” Graham asked, coming downstairs and holding out his phone to his older sister.

“No, it can't, at least, I don't think so.” Dani lied. Predictably, the emergency phones upstairs started ringing off the hook, along with the Burns cell phones and Heatwave's comm link.

Heatwave answered his comm. It was from Optimus.

Optimus sounded worried. “Bumblebee called, Chase is assisting him and his team. However, his return may be delayed. If anyone exhibits unusual behavior, seal them in the bunker and call me.”

“Yes sir.” Heatwave sighed as Optimus hung up on him without so much as a goodbye.

Things proceeded as normal after that.

Blades complained, Boulder painted, and Heatwave broke another training dummy.

Eventually, the restlessness of the bots got to him, and Charlie had to escape. He decided to take the old squad car to check on the town. Along his drive, he spotted something in the distance that wasn't there before. A stain on the horizon, ugly brick opposite from the high tech infrastructure that Griffin Rock was known for.

An old brick lighthouse.

Charlie shivered. Something about it felt off. He decided to pull Cody out of school for the afternoon. His comm link clicked, an awful whirl and clicking of machinery filling his ears. He pulled his comm link out of his ears and kept driving, yet the screeching continued on, so loud that--if he looked down--he could practically see the comm link vibrating against the seat from the force of the noise. Pulling up to the school almost felt like a relief, as his ears filled with the voices of children and were no longer alone to the whirring. Despite the ominous notification, the elementary school still hosted recess outside, little kids on the swings and climbing the play structures.

Cody was already waiting with Frankie in the school lobby when he pulled up. He signed both of them out, taking a detour to drop Frankie off at her house, going inside to see Doc. After so long working with the rescue bots, it almost felt strange to leave a vehicle alone now when he went inside.

“What's going on, Doc? What's with the lighthouse?” He asked, looking over Doc’s shoulder and seeing him examine photos of the lighthouse, and the meteor shower from the night before.

“It seems to me that the meteor shower from last night brought up some red flags from NASA. Nothing too extreme, just that the largest pieces from the meteors landed closer to shore than expected. I’m sure the notification was sent as an overabundance of caution.” He explained. He didn't seem to believe it himself.

Before Charlie could argue, the sky darkened. Looking outside, Charlie could see a massive Cybertronian warship heading for Griffin Rock. Charlie’s comm link beeped, and he answered it. “Hello?”

“I am Megatron, the leader of the Decepti- frag!”

Charlie watched in shock as a golden hand snatched the Nemesis out of the sky, pulling it under the waves.

Doc was the first to break the uneasy silence. “I guess that's the answer to the lighthouse.”

“Hello?” A new young voice with a strong transatlantic accent said over the comm link, “Hello hello? My name is Rapture, can anyone hear me?”

“We can hear you, Rapture. This is Charlie Burns, Chief of police. Are you ok? There's an algae bloom, it's not safe to be on the beach.”

“But I’m not on the beach.” the voice answered, sounding proud of themselves.

“Where are you then?”

“Floating.”

“Kid, I told you, you can't be out there-”

“I'm floating below the algae, silly!”

“How - kid, that's not safe. Where are you, I have a Rescue Team, I can help.”

“No, unfortunately I can't afford it.”

“Giving me your location or a Rescue Team?”

“A Rescue Team, silly! The prices were up to five dollars a rescue last I checked. Of course, Mr. Ryan hasn't given me his legers in a while, but I'm sure he will soon. But still, five dollars! Maybe if I dip into Mr. Ryan’s penny jar, I could have enough.”

“That's not necessary, how about I send a Rescue Team as a favor to you.”

“Oh! In that case, yes. Mr. Ryan loves collecting favors. He keeps them all pinned to a corkboard on little slips of paper for a rainy day.”

“Where are you?”

“Off the coast of the island you are on. You can see my lighthouse from the shore.”

Charlie looked out on the sea. The lighthouse was still there, still ominously waiting for … something.

“Do you have any engineer medics?”

“What?” Charlie was confused.

“Minicons would be preferable, there's some spaces that normal bots can't reach. I'm still a kid, after all.”

“Bots? Rapture, are you human?”

“I never was, Charlie. I still need help. Are you still going to help me?”

Charlie shook himself out of his confusion, Doc giving him a worried look. “Of course. I can have some of my Rescue Bots sail to the lighthouse in order to meet you. Do you have any way to get them inside?”

“I have multiple space hatches. I’ve kept humans before, my interior is good and save, but messy.”

“Rapture, are you injured?”

Rapture paused. “There’s cracks in my outer shields and some of my bathyspheres are compromised. The heels of my feet are flooded, and so is one of my hips. There's some coding issues too, but I can fix it myself. The big thing is part of my transformation cog is offline. What I can feel really, really hurts, and I’ve made it a priority for my antibody drones. I think I need a medic for that. Other than that, I’m right as rain.”

Doc Greene looked up from his control panel. “You should go.” He said, dead serious as he messed around with the controls.

“I should, Doc. CODY! TIME TO GO!”

Charlie pulled into the driveway of the firehouse, parking on the grass and walking inside. “Alright team. The lighthouse is a part of a being known as Rapture. He told me that falling to earth is due to an issue in his transformation sequence. Boulder, Blades, I want you two to make contact, with Dani and Graham as assistants. He said that his interior is safe for humans, and once you locate the problem, contact us for backup.”

Dani and Graham nodded.

“I don't know how useful I will be, but I can try.” Dani said, already making a list of things to pack in her head. “How long would we be gone?”

Charlie sighed. “I don't know. I hope that whatever problems Rapture has could be solved quickly, but pack lightly. Blades, Boulder, I want you to stock up on plenty of water and nonperishable food.”

The four of them prepared quickly, each of them taking enough supplies for at least two weeks.

Charlie watched with a heavy heart as Heatwave loaded case after case of food and water into both of the bots.

With the last edition of the two Burns personal bags, they drove to the beach.

With one last look back to their family on the beach, both Boulder and Blades walked into the surf.

The first time the four of them missed a check in after 24 hours, Charlie thought they were out of range.

By the third day, he was calling both Dani and Graham’s cell phones, and the bots' comm links, knowing that he wouldn't get an answer.

After a week of missed check ins, Charlie called Optimus.

“It's not just you, Charlie.” He said, a grave tone to his voice. “We are missing a few of our own. High Tide has continued to fail check ins, and one of my top operatives and her partners has gone missing when she went to investigate his disappearance.”

“So what's the plan? Is the Coast Guard involved?”

Optimus took a deep breath. “Grieve.”

Charlie nearly dropped his phone. “What?”

“I am so sorry for your loss.”

“No, no that can't be right. We are going to find them. Optimus, please, they are my children. I can't just leave my children.” Charlie ran his fingers through his hair.

“You are welcome to lead an independent search, but all efforts to find our missing operatives have been futile.” Optimus abruptly hung up on the panicking man.

Charlie coached himself down from his incoming panic attack, fragments of a plan coming together. “I need to call for a temporary rescue squad from the mainland.” He said, taking out a pen and notepad out of his chest pocket. “Get the bots on board, get a bag packed. Food, water, survival kit, medical supplies. Tell the mayor.” Charlie took out his phone and called the mayor's office. Predictably, it went to the voicemail.
Charlie waited patiently for the beep, and left a message.

“This is Chief Burns. I am calling to tell you that effective tomorrow, me and my family will be on emergency leave for a period of three weeks. At the same time, our emergency vehicles, except the fire bot, will be sent back to Washington for an inspection during that time period. It falls on the mayor's office to schedule and fund a temporary crew during that time frame. Thank you for your understanding.”

He put his phone away and went upstairs, grabbing a few photos off the wall and taking them out of the frame. He put them into a waterproof sleeve he found in the junk drawer in the kitchen and tucked it into his chest pocket.

He went back downstairs. “Kade, I’m going downtown. Clean out the fridge while I'm gone.” Kade frowned, but got up off the couch to do what he was told.

He got into the old squad car and went to the only sports store in town. There, he bought ammo, two big bags of water purification tablets, a couple pairs of waders, and three sets of basic survival gear for off grid camping. He would clear out the firehouse too. He didn't know what he would find once he got into Rapture, and he knew every piece of gear had to count for something.

On the way back to the firehouse, he left a message for Doc Greene. “Hey Doc, it's Charlie. Just want to let you know that me and my kids and the bots are going on a mission for the big guy for the next couple of weeks. Kade and Heatwave will be staying behind. Cody may or may not tag along, but if we aren't back in three weeks, could you do me a favor and move some boxes for the temp guys? The plan is to be in and out in a little over a week, but you know my luck. Talk to you in a couple of weeks.” He pulled into the driveway, Heatwave looking concerned.

“You told Kade to clean out the fridge.”

“I will be going on a trip.”

“Where?”

“To retrieve my son and daughter. Optimus left it up to us. You and Kade will hold down the fort, a temporary rescue squad will be sent over from the mainland.”

“Wait, Optimus did what?”

“He left it up to us. Heatwave, I can't leave Griffin Rock without someone I trust holding the fort down. I need you and Kade to run things while I’m gone.”

Cody, who was shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation, spoke. “Please dad, let me go. I'm not needed here, don't send me off to the Greene's to worry about you.”

Charlie felt the pictures in his chest pocket. “Fine. But stay close, and you follow every one of my directions without question, do you understand?”

Cody nodded, and Charlie reached for a hug. Cody gladly accepted it, wiping away a few stubborn, angry tears.

That afternoon Charlie bought a two person kayak off a tourist, and they packed what they could. They paddled in silence, Griffin Rock never fading from the horizon.

They pulled the kayak up the boardwalk, being sure to tie it down before prying open the lighthouse doors.

The lighthouse was grand, with bronze placards and emerald wallpaper. A huge red banner with gold embroidery hangs overhead under a massive gold plated bust.

“No gods or kings, only man.” Cody read. “Noble!”

Charlie grabbed Cody's hand and led him into the bathysphere, pulling the lever behind them. They sank under the waves, Cody reading the fathom numbers aloud as they passed. “Dad! We are 18 fathoms below the sea! How noble is that!”

“It's very cool-” the lights went out, and an old timey ad jingle played, accompanied by flashing ads.

“Dad, what are plasmids?”

“I don't know, son.” Charlie replied, watching the propaganda film currently being projected on the window. “But I don't like this Andrew Ryan person, or his followers. I want you to stay close to me, and-”

The projector turned off to show the beautiful deep ocean spread around them, sea life already making their homes on the body of the young cityformer. The recording of Andrew Ryan kept rambling on and on about censorship and the fall of man, but both of them tuned it out in favor of drinking in the vast ocean surrounded by beautiful art deco style buildings, with clear tunnels serving as city streets with holographic billboards glowing faintly, their brilliant colors dimmed down to conserve energon, but still enchanting to the eye.

Charlie spotted a bot in one of the catwalks, but didn't recognize it as anyone he knew. They slowed down, entering a tube, neon signs proclaiming Rapture’s second moto.

“All things flow into the city.” Cody read, squeezing his dad’s hand.

They stopped with a bump against the dock, the door still sealed tight.

As the water washed away, there was a scream. A man rushed for the sphere's door, banging on the door before being dragged away by a woman in a bunny mask. She hummed to herself as she speared him with a fireplace poker before attempting to chip at the door of the bathysphere. She gave up quickly, scrambling away into the darkness.

There was a crackle of a radio. Charlie searched for the sound, finding an antique handheld radio mounted to the side of the bathysphere.

“Would you kindly take the shortwave radio? It's secured against the likes of Rapture and his ilk. My name is Silas, I aim to keep you alive. Could you tell me your name?”

“Griffin Rock Police Chief Charlie Burns.”

“I think I will call you Charlie. Well then Charlie, do you have anyone else with you?”

“No.” He lied, motioning to Cody to stay silent.

“What brings you down here? This isn't a nice place, Charlie.”

“I am looking for my son and daughter. They disappeared on a fishing trip near the lighthouse, I went inside and well, I guess I am here.”

“Well then, you're lucky to have me. That splicer you just heard? It's a piece of work. I sent one of my men to take care of her, but as you just saw, she's a nasty one.”

Charlie grabbed Cody's hand, keeping the other on his gun. He led his youngest to an overturned crate. “Stay here.” He explored the travel bay, noting the protest signs on the floor and the general griminess of the place. He picked up a wrench and lured out the splicer, watching in horror as she was crushed under the weight of a neon sign.

He didn't realize Silas was speaking until he yelled his name.

“CHARLIE!” Silas's voice went cold. “I will ask you again, who is with you?”

Charlie’s heart was rushing in his ears as he ran back to where he hid Cody. He nearly cried with relief to find him perfectly safe in the crate. He pulled him out, answering the man as he gave Cody a hug.

“My son. My son Cody, he's with me, I swear, I am just looking for my son and daughter. But I swear, I only lied to protect him.”

“That's… admirable. Nice to meet you Cody, I am Silas.”

“Cody. Nice to meet you, Silas.” Cody took Charlie's hand as he guided him to a stairwell he had found prior.

This time, however, there was a flaming couch they had to avoid in order to climb up the stone steps. Charlie was nearly thrown onto it by a strung out man, Cody getting him with his wrench at the last possible moment.

Cody watched the flames consume the man, Charlie taking his hand and pulling him into the next room.

Charlie's police radio crackled. “Hi! I found you again.” Rapture said. “I can't promise I can check in as often as I wish, but I would like to apologize for the conduct of my citizens. Feel free to euthanize the more violent ones. My antibody drones are a bit too occupied with my priority internal repairs to patrol as much as they did back when Mr. Ryan was in charge.” The signal cut out, and Charlie took a deep breath, taking Cody’s hand and searching for a safe place to regroup.

He spotted another stairwell, dragging him up the stairs. There was a vending machine right front and center, a bottle of something already dispensed into the slot. Two statues of chibi headed little girls flanked the machine. Do

Charlie picked up the bottle, seeing a needle cartridge in the bottom. “Silas, what is this glowing red stuff? Some sort of party drug? Why is it so openly sold?”

“Well, it is good for some kinds of party tricks. Try it. It should make protecting Cody much easier.”

“I don't think I will, Silas.” He set it down like it would jump out and bite him.

“Would you kindly inject yourself with the plasmid gun?” Silas asked, a dangerous grit to his voice.

“No.” Charlie said, looking back at Cody. “I don't know what's in this, I’m not just going to -”

“Charlie, don't make me ask again. If you wish to see your children again, you will use plasmids so you don't die down here like a little Johnny Topside to a splicer.”

“No.”

“Charlie, we don't have infinite time to argue. Either you take the plasmids, or Cody does. I don't care, but if someone doesn't take it, then I don't think that my expertise could be useful.”

“Fine. At least it's sealed.” He muttered. “Cody, I want you to stay by the stairs. If something goes wrong, there's narcan in my belt. If I don't wake up, find someone that you can trust and stay with them. I love you, alright?”

“Okay.” Cody breathed, stepping away from his dad, holding back tears.

Charlie took a deep breath before pressing the plasmid gun against his wrist and injecting it into his wrist like an EpiPen.

That was the moment his whole body was engulfed with pain. He stumbled forward, collapsing onto his knees as electricity wracked his body.

The last thing he saw was Cody sobbing, holding onto the handrail for dear life while staring down the stairwell.

Charlie woke up to a young voice talking to his son.

“Little Brother! Little brother, you know this angel is an angel! Mr Bubbles would be happy to take care of you! He takes great care of me!”

Charlie groaned, grabbing onto the railing and getting up onto his feet.

“Johnny Topside!” The Little girl, who was wearing a dingy purple dress, giggled. “You're not an angel! Oh, what a good Johnny Topside you are. Bringing a new Little Brother for me to bring to the orphanage!”

“Cody.” Charlie croaked.

The Little Sister smiled, her black veins popping out of her skin, her yellow eyes glowing in the darkness. “Oh! Mr. Bubbles, he’s not an angel! Little brother and Johnny are friends! That's sad though. No Johnny Topsides are allowed in the orphanage.” She skipped back down the stairs, climbing up the massive robot’s body, giggling as it walked away with its charge.

Charlie stood up, taking back the wrench and gesturing to Cody to follow him.

They went up an elevator, the screams of some far away splicer echoing in their ears as Silas called them yet again.

“One of my men got a tip. They encountered a pair of non-natives up by this place called Maccadam’s Bounty. Go there, and maybe you could track them down.”

Before Charlie could ask any questions, the radio clicked off.

They walked into a little garden area. Charlie froze as the slightest lullaby echoed through the room.

Silas had led them into a trap.

A particularly motherly splicer nearly ripped Charlie apart, but a single bullet took her down. Cody found a medical kit, and there was a revolver in the stroller she was pushing, the baby in question nowhere to be found.

Cody couldn't stop looking at the remains of the woman. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be the last corpse he saw along the way.

“What the -” Charlie looked out over the flooded tunnel, and the bloated corpses within it.

“Dad, look!”

Charlie turned to the tunnel Cody pointed to, and he watched as a small bot climbed through the tunnel, a teenaged boy and his mother running ahead of her. Before they could blink, a Big Daddy snatched the boy away, the bot yelling after him. She grabbed the woman, who was screaming after the suited creature.

They watched them run after the Big Daddy, Charlie reflexively grabbing for Cody's hand in horror.

They walked through yet another set of fancy corridors, stopping at the top of a stairwell.

The Kashmir Restaurant was grimy, but still decorated for a New Years Eve masquerade party, including party hats littering the ground and bottles of booze cluttering the tables.

Cody picked up a discarded bird mask, looping it on his belt.

Before Charlie could say anything, an argument erupted downstairs.

Charlie pulled Cody into the shadows, Cody sliding on his mask.

They both hurried past them, stopping in front of the bathrooms.

“Need to take a leak, Cody?”

“Yeah.” They stopped, Charlie waiting outside.

Cody did his business, then tried the sinks, looking for one that still had running water. All but the one in the very back of the bathroom didn't work, but as he looked into the mirror, he saw a gaping hole in the wall he didn't notice earlier.

Getting a bad feeling from it, he met his dad outside. “Dad, I found a hole in the wall. I think it might be a way out.”

“Let me see.” Charlie went ahead. “Cody, it's safe. Stay in front of me, and be as quiet as you can.” They crawled through the hole in the wall and climbed onto the catwalk overlooking a grand theater.

Charlie almost dropped his gun when he spotted the Little Sister stabbing a corpse below them. Charlie reached for the radio connected to Silas, but it crackled on before he could press the button.

“Let me guess Charlie, you think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you use to judge right and wrong on the surface is trash down here. Little Sisters carry Adam, the genetic material that keeps the gears of Rapture turning. Everyone wants it. Everyone needs it.” Silas turned off his radio before Charlie could ask further questions.

They made the careful walk across the rickety catwalk over the main theater, Rapture getting enough of a signal to use Charlie's police radio.

“Oh, Mr. Ryan was just fantastic! He took care of me, let Mama Tennenbaum give me Little Brothers and Little Sisters and all the shows and plays I could ask for. I love movies, my theaters are my pride and joy. Mr. Ryan always made sure they were kept in tip top shape.”

“What is the purpose of the Little Sisters?” Charlie asked, trying to keep his tone light. Rapture felt very naive to him, and he couldn't risk him getting angry with him.

“Little Brothers keep me company, and Little Sister harvest Adam from the dead so I can continue to live and grow.”

Grasping at straws, Charlie asked the question that has been haunting his mind ever since he stepped foot in this place. “Rapture, we sent help, two big bots and two humans. Have you seen them?”

“Wait, you sent me help? I thought you were the help! I haven't seen them, but I will keep a lookout. I got to go! Bye!” The radio clicked off, and the Burns went down the stairwell and into the private viewing box off to the side of the stage.

They both watched in horror as a splicer attacked the Little Sister, the girl letting out a shrill scream.

A Big Daddy came running out of nowhere, throwing the splicer against the wall and smashing his head through the window.

Charlie has seen enough. He took the wrench from Cody and smashed open the entrance gate, pulling Cody into the back hallways of the theater. Through a couple wrong turns, they ended up back in the theater, this time in the rows of mangled and torn up seats.

They left the theater, diving back into the labyrinth of back rooms and offices, Charlie taking down splicers as they went.

Of course, this was when things got needlessly complicated.

“I forgot to tell you, I gave control of the cameras and most of my drones to Mr. Ryan.” Rapture said apologetically. “He had a big, better plan for them, and I really wanted to see what he did with them. I haven't been able to see much through them lately. I hope my Little Sisters and Little Brothers are okay. I worry about them a lot.”

Charlie let out a defeated sigh. Of course things couldn't be too easy.

As he and Cody explored the backstage of the theater, Charlie quickly learned that splicers died instantly if he used his electricity on them while they stood in water. That, and the hundreds of cameras dotting the corridors could be smashed with one good hit with the wrench.

Unfortunately for them, not everything could be that easy. As they crossed into the lobby of Maccadam's Bounty, a splicer dropped from the ceiling with a machete.

“Oh, looky looky, it's a little Johnny Topside and his bigger friend. I wonder what sound he'd make when I pop his eyes out of his skull.”

The splicer lunged for Cody, knocking him into a control panel. An alarm blared, Charlie killing him while he was distracted. He grabbed Cody's hand and pulled him out into the open.

That proved to be a mistake as they were swarmed by enraged splicers. Cody grabbed the wrench and pulled on his mask, dashing back to the control panel.

Surprisingly, when he had his mask on, the splicers ignored him, focusing on his dad. Cody ducking behind a pillar to hide. He closed his eyes as the sound of dying splicers and the occasional gunshot rattled his bones. He reached for the bot shutdown switch, pulling it before taking cover in an abandoned storefront.

After an agonizing few minutes, the hall was quiet, Charlie's footsteps being the only sound echoing through the high ceilings.

“Cody?”

Cody ducked out from behind a cashier desk. “I'm here dad.”

Charlie grabbed something off the nearest corpse. “I need you to hold on to this for me.” he said, checking that the old fashioned pistol was unloaded and had the safety on before handing it over.

Cody took it, holding as if it could bite him if he touched it too long.

“Keep it in your bag. I hope we never need to use it.” Charlie scanned the room, spotting a circus themed vending machine off to the side. “There. Let's see what we can scrounge up.” Charlie took out the money he had taken out of the cash registers and looted from splicer corpses when his son wasn't looking. He bought ammo and Eve. At first, he had no idea what the sealed substance was, but reading the label informed him that it was a necessity for the plasmids flowing through his veins. Before Cody could stop him, he injected his first dose of Eve into his veins.

“Dad, what did you do?” Cody cried. “What was that?”

“Eve. I had to feed the plasmids, Cody.”

“You scared me. Don't ever do that again!”

“I'm sorry, but what did I tell you about following directions?”

“Sorry dad. Wait, what's that?” Cody pointed to a circular hole in the wall framed by a bronze outcropping in the shape of a rising sun.

“I don't know. But I don't think I want to stick around to find out.” He said, stopping to purify a bottle of water for both of them.

Cody wandered around the room, taking in the beauty of the abandoned mall. He stepped over a corpse and around the broken fountain, tripping over a dead splicer and falling, his hands scrambling for purchase on the bloody ground. His fall sent the splicer’s gun sliding, a few rounds firing into the adjacent storefront.

Luckily, they all missed Cody as he got up onto his feet and ran back to his father.

“Cody! Cody, are you ok?”

“Yeah, I just tripped.”

Charlie picked up the machine gun that Cody tripped over, turning on the safety and slipping the strap over his head. “Let's go.”

They sneaked through the servant's corridors, stepping over dead bodies still dressed for serving the new years ball.

“Dad, I think there's an elevator there!” Cody said, pointing up ahead. They hurried inside, the gate closing with a bang.

A projector screen kicked on, Andrew Ryan greeting them with a malicious grin. “Well hello there gentlemen. If you come here to conquer, know that it will be the last thing you-”

Charlie's radio clicked. “Mr. Ryan! I brought them here to help me! You know my t-cog has been acting up! And with the break in, I need repairs!” Rapture whined.

“Fine. Just don't undermine my life’s work, and I won't kill you.”

The doors opened, and they were spat out into a back hallway of the medical pavilion, signs on the walls advertising plasmids as all types of cure alls.

Though, it seemed the most popular use of plasmids were for plastic surgery, by the posters up for various procedures, showcasing before and after photos.

Charlie stopped multiple times to destroy cameras, Cody figuring out how to hack them by taking apart the few he didn't completely crush.

“It's actually quite a simple set up, dad.” he said, sitting on a broken balcony that he climbed up in order to retrieve a broken camera.

“The wiring is pretty easy to work with. If we find ones we can hide from, I am sure we could return power over them to Rapture if we tried.”

“No promises, Cody. But, we can try.”

“Noble. But, could you help me down?”

Charlie chuckled. “Of course.” He helped him down, ruffling Cody's hair.

Cody laughed. “Dad!”

“Oh come on, I haven't been able to do that to you all day.”

They broke into a side office, Charlie picking up and using another vial of Eve before going out into the main lobby of the medical pavilion.

The place was swarmed with security bots, the bot shutdown panel nowhere to be found.

On Charlie’s signal, Cody ducked under the grand staircase, picking off security bots while Charlie handled the splicers that swarmed out of the adjoining offices to investigate.

Cody grabbed a security bot that fell, attempting to hack it. He succeeded, forcing it behind him as he waited for Charlie to finish off the splicers. At long last, the sound of gunfire stopped, Charlie offering him his hand. He took it, the security bot following him. “Dad, look, I made it work for us. It can help you fight. I think I could figure out the turrets too.”

“That’s great Cody. However, I need you to focus on hiding when you can.” They climbed up the stairs and into the inner lobby of the medical pavilion.

The inner lobby of the main office was flooded, bodies strewn around the room. The checkerboard floors were splattered with blood, with framed posters knocked off of walls and cracks in the ceiling and wall plaster. The lights kicked on, exposing the ornate pillars and wooden doors leading off to the side hallways.

Charlie and Cody chose a side hallway at random.

The hallway’s pipes were leaking water, a large blood puddle on the floor. Against the wall, a surgical cart dripping with blood held rusted surgical tools and bottles of disinfectant. They both carefully stepped around the blood and into the first surgery.

“Hello humans. I would suggest going left." The male voice over the intercom was suave and rich, almost hypnotizing. “I am not quite ready to receive you. Don’t worry. I mean you no harm.”

Charlie pulled Cody back into the hallway and halfway down the stairs.

“I don’t like him, dad.” Cody admitted.

“Me neither. But I don’t think we have a choice here, son.”

“So. We go left?”

Charlie sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

They walked back into the inner lobby, and turned left. “Hello again. This is your doctor speaking. The surgeon formerly known as Dr Steinman is permanently out of office. Luckily, you have me, the fabulous Knockout, to handle your appointment. Unfortunately, I still have to clean up from my last appointment, so I would suggest taking another left in the meantime. I will call you down into the surgery when I am ready to see you.”

Charlie went down the hall, passing a row of Vita chambers.

The security bot took out a hidden splicer, Charlie pulling Cody to safety. They walked into the funeral home attached to the surgery, Cody stealing money out of the cash registers by a display room. This saved his life, as splicers poured out of a hole in the wall.

The intercom beeped. “Ah! Fleshies! Get out of my surgery!” Knockout yelled, a chainsaw roaring in the background.

Charlie gunned them down, bodies clogging up the hole until it was entirely blocked off. He and Cody didn’t stay still for long, ducking into a supply closet to raid anything left behind.

Cody filled his pack with as many boxes of bandages, first aid kits, and bottles of water that he can find. They stopped and chucked anything that was expired, patching up a couple of cuts and scrapes they got along the way. Cody insisted on disinfecting Charlie’s needle marks and replacing the bandaids on the more ripped up skin.

They left the closet, entering the waiting room of the funeral home. The room was full of ripped up chairs and framed posters, pools of broken glass, blood, and murky water crunching and sloshing under foot.

The sloshing got worse as they walked deeper into the funeral home, and into a corridor that was flooded up to their ankles.

The intercom clicked on. “Well, your appointment is now postponed due to me needing to clean my chainsaw. I think I saw one of those plasmid thingies down in the morgue, and a couple tonics too. Speaking of tonics, if you come and meet me in the surgery after i got it all cleaned up, maybe I can get you a few more of those things, and plenty of Eve, of course. Just don’t come early. The operating room is a bit … sticky at the moment.”

Charlie shivered, and kept a hand on Cody’s shoulder as they climbed back up the stairs, and followed the signs to the downstairs morgue. Charlie was very happy he had bought both of them waders as he shook the water and blood off his rubberized boots, Cody doing the same.

Surprisingly, the crematory was still lit, a body waiting to be burned. Charlie pushed the cot into the fire, the cot pulling back to reveal a scorched tonic. “Huh. I guess that would be useful.” he said, gulping down the bitter liquid. He coughed, electricity flowing to his hand. He watched as his control over the electroshock plasmid was fine tuned from the rough control he had before.

“Woah! Noble!” Cody watched from the other side of the room, still wary of the sparks shooting off his dad’s hand. Charlie shook his hand, and they went away. They walked past the crematory and deeper into the morgue.

“Dad! Look! A Gatherer’s Garden!” Before Charlie could stop him, Cody crawled into the boarded off office through a vent. Charlie saw no choice but to follow him through the vent.

Before Charlie could scold him, the intercom beeped. “Parasites wander our halls.” Ryan declared. “We rebuild our city, and the doubters send a fly to spoil our ointment. One thousand Adam to the man or woman who pins their wings.”

The halls lit up with noise, a cacophony of the footsteps of dozens of splicers all gunning for them.

Charlie readied his machine gun, dread coiling in his gut as dozens of splicers crowded the walls of the small office.

“That's gas on the floor!” Cody said, pointing to the liquid pooling around the outside of the office. He ruffled through his pockets. “I have matches!” He struck one and threw it, jumping back as the whole crowd of angry splicers caught fire.

He laughed, Charlie hugging him tightly as the fire burned out fast.

Charlie grabbed the glowing vial of plasmids and a syringe of Eve.

Cody bit his lip with worry. “Do you have to take it?”

“I don't see a way out of here without them. Just - try the door.”

Cody pulled open the door, flinching as Charlie hissed in pain. He turned around to see his father carefully injecting Eve into his wrist.

“Dad!” He grabbed his father's wrist as Charlie threw the empty syringe off to the side. “I don't like that you take that stuff.”

“I'm sorry, ok, but I don't see a choice here.” He shooed Cody out the door and plunged the vial of Adam into his wrist.

Charlie screamed, a horrific, burning pain engulfed his body, his veins glowing red as the serum coursed through his body.

“Dad? DAD! Are you ok? Dad! Say something.” Cody pleaded, afraid to touch him and get burned but so, so scared of being left alone.

Charlie wiped away his tears and faced his son. “Cody, it's ok. It just hurts more than I expected, that's all. We can go now, maybe find somewhere safe to sleep or eat in the meantime. Does that sound good?”

Cody took a deep breath, and tried his best to smile. “Yeah dad, it sounds like a plan.”

“Well, aren’t you two resourceful? Meet me in the operating room. I have something to give to you.”

They made it back to the surgery.

Charlie gaped at the impossibly shiny red bot sitting in the operating room, throwing chunks of minced splicers into a huge bin.

He waved. “Hello humans. Give me a second to wash up.” He put his hands into an odd device by his feet. They were sparkling clean by the time he took them out. “That's better. I found something that the late surgeon cooked up before I found him guilty of scratching my lustrous finish. It's on that table.”

Knockout pointed, and Charlie picked up the plasmid.

He took a deep breath, and injected the serum.

Sensory overload hit him like a truck, the telekinesis plasmid flooding into his veins.

Charlie doubled over, and Knockout laughed. “Aw, poor squishy. Did I misread the dose? This should help. Don't drink them all in one shot!” Knockout places a bag on the counter in front of Cody. “Here. For your troubles.” A singular bandaid was oh so gently offered to Charlie.

Charlie took it, of course. “Thanks, I guess.” Charlie mumbled, putting it on a scratch on his bicep.

“Anyway, I have a proposition for you. Kill that fellow Silas and bring me my love’s body, and I will help you get to the head of Rapture, and find your son.”

“You know where he is?” Charlie asked, his eyes sparkling with nearly abandoned hope.

“Not exactly.” Knockout admitted. “But, as you squishes say, you scratch my back, and I will scratch yours. Do we have a deal?” Knockout offered Charlie his pinkie to shake.

“Deal.” Charlie shook on it and turned away from Knockout, but before he could leave the operating room, Knockout had one last thing to say.

“And Charlie?” Charlie turned back to him. “Make it hurt.”

As soon as Knockout was out of earshot, Cody pulled Charlie aside. “Are we really going to do it dad?”

“I don't know. I don't trust Silas, but right now, he is our only option for finding both Dani and Graham.”

“I don't like either of them.” Cody admitted. “but Silas has been pretty helpful so far.”

“Let's think about it. Besides, I think it's unlikely that we will meet Silas. He’s been more than comfortable helping us from the sidelines. To be honest, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.”

Cody took a deep breath. “I still don't know what to think.”

“Me neither. But we need to keep moving.”

They walked through a couple abandoned dental offices and through a vault door into another glass tube walkway. Cody stopped there to eat, Charlie taking inventory of what they had.

While Cody ate, they heard a thud, dust leaking through the door frames. Charlie put down the box of ammo he was inspecting and opened the closest door.

All there was rubble, stacked to the ceiling, an aftershock forcing Cody to shovel the last of his food into his mouth and grab his backpack. Charlie forced the door shut.

“Sounds like another tunnel collapsed down there.” Silas said.

“Looks like it.”

“I mean, Welcome to Rapture. He’s a real pile of junk when he’s not prattling on in your ear.”

Charlie frowned. “If Rapture is living, is his crumbling infrastructure a sign of illness or some sort of injury?”

“Sick in the head, maybe. But the main structure of him is intact. It’s all the human touches and additions that are crumbling. Bots and humans, they are truly incompatible in a way. It’s a shame. There’s so much benefit beings like Rapture can bring to humanity.”

“But what about what us humans can do to help Rapture?”

“Well, isn’t that the question you’re trying to answer? If you make progress in that area, do tell me.” The radio clicked off.

Charlie picked up his bag and slung it over his protesting shoulders. He really was getting too old for this.

They walked through the tunnel and into a junction, the city shaking again as a flaming Big Daddy was thrown through a wall, a screaming Little Sister hurrying after him.

“Dad?” Cody cried, pointing to the burning creature. “We got to help them!”

“I will handle the Big Daddy. Cody, pull the Little Sister away from the flames.” Cody dodged the Little Sister’s attempt at spearing him with her syringe as he pulled her away from the wreckage. She slipped from his hands, running into an adjoining room. Charlie stopped him from chasing her. “He’s gone. Let’s be careful.”

A splicer giggled in the room over, a massive old ballroom. “It’s just you, me, and all of the tasty Adam I can drink.”

Charlie shoved Cody behind him, and ducked behind the cover of a smashed window.

Twin sobs echoed through the old ballroom, one Little Sister clutched in the hand of a leering male splicer, the other backing away from his swinging club.

A shot rang out, and Charlie drew his pistol and fired into the head of the splicer, another shot whizzing by his head as he foolishly emptied the clip of his modern pistol into the head and chest of the splicer.

“Hey!” a gun was reloaded above him, and Charlie looked up to see a stern looking woman in a pink dress brandishing a shotgun. “Leave them alone!”

“I’m sorry ma’am, I was just protecting these girls.”

“With another thug waiting in the wings? Come out, you brute! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Cody slowly ducked out of his hiding place, shaking like a leaf as he looked to his father for guidance. “Oh. I apologize. You aren’t much older than the Little Sisters themselves. Stay innocent, my boy. I don’t wish to put a slug of lead into your skull.”

The sound of clicking heels echoed through the room. A woman's voice spoke. “I heard a gunshot. Dr. Tennenbaum, are you alright?”

“Lady El, please, go back to bed. Your incisions are too fresh for you to be on your feet. It was just a splicer that got too close.”

“Oh. If you say so.”

More footsteps, and Dr. Tennenbaum turned back to Cody and Charlie. “Ignore her. She's just the nursemaid.”

“Ma'am, I still have so many questions. What do you mean by nursemaid? Why has Rapture been so quiet? He was speaking to me earlier, but he’s been silent for the past couple of hours.”

“Rapture spoke?” She asked. “He hasn’t spoken to anyone other than Mr. Ryan in quite some time. He likes meeting new people, but gets bored of them quickly. I wouldn’t rely on him for much of anything.”

“Well that’s not helpful.” Cody muttered, crossing his arms and pouting.

“Be nice.” Charlie hissed. “My name is Charlie. This is my son, Cody.”

“Dr. Tennenbaum. Don’t hurt my Little Ones.”

“It’s alright, Charlie.” Silas spoke, disgust clear in his voice. “That’s not a child, not anymore. Dr. Tennenbaum saw to that.”

“I refuse to hurt a child, Silas. Especially not in front of my son.” Charlie bent down on one knee in front of the smallest of the two girls, a blond with dark eyes and a green dress. She ran away, squeezing through a crack in the wall and out of Charlie’s reach. The other girl had backed herself behind a couple of steamer trunks.

“Pretty words for someone who made those little monsters.” Charlie heard Silas’s words in his ears but didn’t want to believe it. “Each of those freaks have enough Adam that protecting your boy would be a walk in the park. Trust me, you two won’t survive without it.”

Tennenbaum threw something, and Cody caught it, running up to Charlie and handing it over. “Here! There is another way. Use this, free them from their torment. I will make it worth your while… somehow.”

“I’m not going to hurt them.” Charlie promised.

“I wish I could believe you. Help her, and maybe that could change.”

Charlie examined the vial of Adam Cody had given him. It glowed faintly in the light. He put it away in his pack, and stepped closer to the trapped Little Sister. He cornered her behind a steamer trunk, crouching down and crab walking towards her. He grabbed her, and pulled her into a hug. The Little Sister sobbed and pulled away, but he held firm, hugging her tight as her Adam flowed into him.

She yawned, looking sleepily at him with a smile. “You saved me.” She whispered. “Thank you.”

Charlie gave her shoulders another squeeze before standing up, holding her hand as he brought her in sight of Tennebaum’s balcony.

“You made the right choice, Charlie. Now, let her use the Little Sister tunnel network to get to safety. You can’t bring her on your travels, and she’s much safer with me or finding another Big Daddy to hang around until she catches Rapture’s attention.”

“What happens then?” Cody asked.

“She would have access to his more private areas to keep safe. Rapture has his secret spaces, and being in his good graces is the best way to stay safe down here. Try not to upset him.” Tennenbaum turned away and left the balcony, leaving Charlie stunned. The Little Sister climbed into the tunnels without another word.

The radio flipped on, Silas “I hear Tennenbaum appealed to your good nature.”

“I don’t kill kids.” Charlie growled.

“Whoa, no need for aggression. I’m no splicer. I’m just saying that you can use that adam in the Gatherer’s Garden vending machines. You can pick up new plasmids, and maybe get a few for your son while you are at it. It’s just something to think about.”

The power flickered, and a dark corner of the room illuminated, a Gatherer’s Garden lighting up in pretty pink neon. Cody raided a few scattered crates for ammo and other supplies while Charlie used his newly gained Adam to buy some upgrades.

They left the room through a side door, getting spat out in the front lobby of the medical pavilion.

The radio clicked on, Rapture humming nervously. “Charlie, there’s something big up ahead. It looks to be stuck in a side hallway. It’s no Big Daddy.”

“Cody, here.” Charlie handed back the wrench to his son. “If something goes wrong, hide.”

“Hello?” A woman called out. “Are you two sane? You can’t hide, your bodies show up on Arcee’s scanners.”

“What’s your name?” Charlie yelled, motioning to Cody to hide behind a desk.

“June. June Darby. I am looking for my son Jack. Me, him and Arcee were tricked into coming here. We are stuck in the side corridor leading to the morgue, my partner underestimated how much space she needed when she transformed, and now we are both stuck. The closest door is locked from the outside. Come here, I promise, this isn’t a trap, we need help.”

“My name is Charlie.” he yelled back. “Where are you?”

“One of the dental offices!” Another voice boomed. It was feminine, but not June’s.

Charlie motioned for Cody to follow him. They walked up to the office door, spying a faint glowing blue light under the rubble.

The light opened her eyes.

“Hi, how about you get us out of here?” Arcee shifted the weight on her shoulders. She was stuck on her hands and knees, most of the rubble being on her back. June was pressed against the door.

Charlie swung his wrench and broke the lock, pulling the door open. June grabbed his arm and pushed Cody towards the lobby. “She has to break through!”

The sound of cracking plaster and splitting wood echoed behind them, June ducking behind the front desk as a loud boom shook the ground. The sound of scraping metal against tile cut through the din, Arcee’s eyes casting spotlights around the ruined room.

Charlie could hear her transform. She rolled up to the desk, her blasters glowing in the dark. “June, let's go.”

“Wait, we have food, water, iodine tablets. I’m also here to look for my son and daughter.” Charlie explained. He took off his pack and rummaged through it, pulling out a bottle of water purifying tablets and a spare bottle of water. June checked that they were sealed before slipping them into Arcee’s subspace.

“There’s an emergency access dock across from the medical pavilion. Me and June were going to use it to get back up to the surface to find help.”

“Arcee, you can’t possibly be considering going back up there without Jack.”

“I think it’s better to keep him alive in our thoughts instead of losing ourselves in our grief.”

June burst into tears. “Please, Arcee, don’t do this to me!”

“You are a civilian, June. I barely managed to protect you so far. I’m not losing two partners in one day. The monsters that took Jack were fueled by some sort of artificial energon, harvesting it from corpses. I will make sure to lead the search efforts, but only if you are safe. Charlie, Cody, are you coming with us?”

“I can’t. My kids, but Cody, this is your chance to back out.”

Cody took Charlie’s hand. “I’m staying.”

Charlie nodded, closing his eyes for a moment. “Fine. But you have to follow my orders. It’s life or death here. Do you understand, Cody?”

“Yes dad.”

June was still crying softly. “I’ve made up my mind. Charlie, please, try to find my boy. I will go with Arcee and help her convince Bill to launch a search.”

“I wish you luck.” Arcee said, revving her engine. June retrieved her helmet from Arcee’s subspace, and they drove down the stairwell and into the foyer. Arcee transformed and smashed the window into Emergency Access, climbing through it and placing June a safe distance away. She went back for Cody and Charlie, and they made it to the bathyspheres.

Luckily, there were two left, and Charlie watched as Arcee and June left Rapture altogether in the first, just to dive deeper into the city with his son in the second.

They left the bathysphere and into Rapture metro. In front of them, a blood soaked man hung from a cross, his crimes spelled out behind him in blood.

“Topside smuggler?” Cody read. “They hurt him that badly for going to the surface?”

“I guess so. Come on, there's no point in staring.”

They continued walking, Charlie keeping a hand on Cody's pack. Just as they started to relax, they heard a woman screaming and whooping above them.

The metal catwalk clicked and clacked, dust and a few flower petals raining down overhead.

Charlie heard his son take a few panicked breaths. He ruffled his hair lightly, pollen raining on his shoulders.
“I'm here, Cody. I'm right behind you.”

“Yeah dad, you're right behind me. I just have to keep going.”

“Watch your step, but take your time. Sound travels.”

The female splicer screamed again, petals falling from the catwalk. Cody hesitated, but Charlie pushed him gently forward.

Her screams became distant, and the two of them explored the metro station.

“Dad! I found more vending machines. One of them is called a gene swap, I think you are supposed to stick your arm in it.”

Charlie hesitantly stuck his arm into a vending machine marked as a gene swap. The screen advertised the tonics he had previously drank, claiming that not all of them could be active at a time. He chose to leave his genes alone, pulling his arm out of the machine.

Cody had bought ammo and had hacked the Circus of Values while he was figuring out the Gene Swap, so after Charlie looted a Big Daddy corpse hunched in a corner, they set their sights on getting out of the metro station.

Charlie opened the vault door into a flooded hallway. Taking Cody’s hand, they carefully crept through the knee deep water. Cody froze, and pointed up ahead. A female splicer’s shadow was cast on the wall. Charlie took another step and flipped the safety off his pistol. The splicer climbed up into the vent system, leaving a trail of flower petals in her wake.

“The days go by like wind…” she murmured, more flower petals falling from the cracks in the ceiling.

Charlie and Cody carefully crept onto dry cobblestones, Charlie spotting her running by above them through the metal catwalk above their heads.

A fire burned in a barrel to their left, Cody shivering as they passed a pile of corpses.

Charlie opened yet another vault door.

They came out into a marketplace, a sign for Fontaine's Fisheries up ahead in glowing blue neon. Advertisements for competing businesses lined the walls.

A dried up sewer was the bridge between two opposite marketplaces. Once on the other side, they entered the loading dock, taking a back route to Fontaine Fisheries.

A Gatherer’s Garden sat prominently outside the fishery, a pair of Little Sisters waiting in front of it with a stuffed animal at their feet.

A stuffed animal Charlie could recognize anywhere.

“What is this?” Charlie asked, his voice shaking in disbelief, picking up his daughter’s childhood comfort toy. “Where did you find this?”

The Little Sister offered no explanation, struggling to keep hold over her blonde friend.

Charlie handed the toy to Cody, who held it like it could turn to dust if he touched it.

He picked up the struggling Little Sister, hugging her to drain the Adam inside her. She went limp in his arms, Charlie swaying softly as she cried. Finally, she wiped away her tears and squirmed to be let down, Charlie putting her back on her feet. “Eh -Elle for you.” She said, pointing to the toy, then to Charlie.

Charlie took the toy back from his son and gave it a hug, running his fingers over its monogrammed foot. “She's here. Leave it to Dani to give the clothes off her back for a kid.”

Cody turned to the first Little Sister, who was watching them from the closest tunnel.

He took out the picture of his sister. “Have you seen this woman? She's my big sister.”

The Little Sister's eyes widened. “She's Lady Elle. Lady Elle talked to Mama Tennenbaum after Lady Elle rescued Little Sister from a rockslide. Lady Elle became a Big Sister.”

“Dad, come here.” Cody pointed at the photo again. “Repeat what you said.”

“Lady Elle looks like her.” She chirped. “Lady Elle looks like me.” Her sister climbed up the vent, and they both climbed deeper into Rapture.

“She said that she saw Dani!” Cody smiled, looking down at the photo.

“No, she confirmed that she saw someone who matched the description of Dani. As much as I want to believe it, it feels too good to be true. But, I do know one thing for sure, and that was that she did make it to Rapture. We need to keep having hope that she is alive down here, that there's something to find. But I don't want to go randomly chasing leads. We heard this Lady Elle speak. She didn't sound like Dani to me.”

“Dad, I -” Cody took a deep breath. “nevermind. I just hope we find them both soon. I miss them.”

“I miss them too.”

The touching moment was ruined by the distant screams of splicers.

There were other gifts along with the toy. A vial of Adam and a plasmid that promised to hypnotize Big Daddies. Cody spotted a missing poster for Masha Romans

Charlie bought a winter blast plasmid, testing it on a piece of rubble.

They entered Fontaine Fisheries, greeted by yet another disemboweled corpse. Cody picked up a tape recorder from a desk, putting it in his bag.

“There's a purple one eyed bastard squatting where some crazy researcher used to live. He’s obsessed with data, but your only way to get to the next area. Would you kindly ask for his help?” Silas asked.

Cody spoke. “But what's up with Andrew Ryan? Why is he so hellbent on controlling Rapture?”

Silas chuckled “Well Cody, I didn't think you knew this, but what's up is a lotta ocean before you reach the sky. But, when men like Ryan gain power, all they want is more and more, until they have squeezed out every ounce. Ryan's ego is something special, he’s rather stuck up. Losing power is his worst nightmare, and every time Rapture doubts his superiority, he gets closer and closer to losing it all. And when a man like that loses everything, he tends to burn what's left. You ask good questions kid. I hope you keep that head of yours nice and sharp when you grow up.” Charlie's radio clicked off.

Cody found a second radio diary, putting it with the first and Elle.

There was a slot in the wall, and Charlie knocked politely. It slid open, a massive purple bot sitting behind the window.

“I am Shockwave. You are my messenger. Take this camera, and get me my research. I need photos of these so-called splicers for my anatomical notes.” A second slot opened, an analog camera tumbling into Cody’s hands. Both slots slammed shut, and a voice screamed.

The female splicer dropped from a hole in the ceiling with a shower of petals.

Charlie was a bit too slow to draw his machine gun, the splicer retreating up in the ceiling.

“That one is above your skill level Charlie. Luckily for you, in the next room there should be a convenient grenade launcher for you to use.”

Cody hid behind a pillar, watching his dad duck into a side room. He ducked his head out before following him. Charlie came out with the grenade launcher. “Cody, take cover.”

The room shook as Charlie fired a grenade up into the ceiling. The female splicer fell from the ceiling, her body on fire as she crawled towards Charlie. Charlie switched to his machine gun, turning her head to mush.

The slot opened. “How interesting. Your survival… It's quite illogical. Go on, get me my research. If you manage to get enough research on those… genetically corrupt humans, I have plenty of adam and distilled water at my disposal.”

Charlie looked through his bag and realized that he had only half his water stores left after giving some to June.

“Fine, you have a deal. Cody, let's go.”

They explored the halls of the fishery, taking photos of the bodies until Shockwave ordered them to return.

“Put down your weapons, and I will let you enter.” He ordered. A pneumatic tube opened in what Charlie thought was a trash can.

With a heavy heart, Charlie put his guns into the pneumatic tube and took back the wrench from Cody.

“I took a look at the cameras. You associate yourself with the Autobots. That's a shame. You were quite useful for my research.”

Cody had one answer to that threat. He grabbed a bomb out of Charlie’s stash, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the slot, pulling his dad to the ground.

The world became a riot of sound as the bomb exploded, turning Shockwave 's head into a column of blue fire. Charlie retrieved his weapons, and the two of them ran out of the thickening smoke, coughing and hacking as the noxious stuff choked out the air.

“Cody, let's move!” Charlie grabbed his son's hand. “Let's go. I want to make sure that we are as far away from the smoke as possible.”

They went down, down, down into the depths of Rapture, down past where any life loving soul would dare enter.

The catacombs were always silent but for the sound of rushing water.

The smoke didn't follow them, but that was the least of their worries. The current was deadly, and the two of them had waded into it without a plan.

“Cody, give me your pack and get in front of me!” Cody did as he was told, shivering as he stepped into the cold water. His waders kept him mostly dry, but they did nothing for the chill. Charlie slung Cody's bag over his own, keeping it out of reach of the water. “We are going to have to walk against the current. Stay close, and stay on your feet. Hold on to my belt loop if you start slipping away.”

They waded through the water, the water rising higher and higher as they walked against the current. With a resounding crack, a pipe burst under their feet, turning the slow moving current into white water rapids. Cody was swept off his feet, Charlie grabbing him at the last moment. They hauled themselves onto the nearest flooded catwalk, inching themselves towards dry land.

Charlie’s radio clicked. “Charlie? Cody? Are you there? Mr. Ryan says I can’t talk to you anymore, but I wanted to know if you were ok. I can’t see you on the cameras anymore. Mr. Ryan really doesn’t like you. There’s a problem with one of my favorite greenhouses. It’s called Arcadia, and it has just the most beautiful trees.”

“We are safe, Rapture. We will take a look. Do you think that the greenhouse will have safe water?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Dad, I picked up two diaries out there. Want to listen to one while we walk?”

“Sure.”

Cody picked one, tucking it under his arm as he walked.

The voice of Andrew Ryan greeted them. “Rapture is transforming before my very eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me. Perhaps it is time to give it a tug. I’m losing control of humanity down here. Rapture is ever loyal as always, but some gentle pressure wouldn’t hurt.”

Charlie and Cody shared a look.

“Poor Rapture.” Cody whispered. “You heard how much he adored Mr. Ryan. All that time, and he didn’t even like him all that much.”

“It’s likely more complicated than that, Cody. But I agree. I don’t trust Ryan.”

They made it to the back entrance of Arcadia, Charlie opening the door to a gorgeous overgrown atrium.

There were flowering trees everywhere, petals falling as the vent system pumped out a false breeze. Cody grinned, breathing in the perfumed air. “It’s beautiful. No wonder Rapture adores this place.” he sat on a park bench, pulling out a box of crackers and shoving a few in his mouth.

“Cody, pace yourself.”

“I just wanted a couple. Come sit with me.”

Charlie sat down, pulling Cody into a one armed hug. “I love you, Cody. I am so, so sorry I got you into this mess.”

“Love you too, dad.” He got up, pulling a bottle of water out of his bag. “Take it. I’ve barely touched what I have and I know you have gone through at least half of your water.”

Before Charlie could answer, there was a scream behind the closest sliding door. Charlie grabbed the shotgun and opened the door with the gun muzzle, using the door as cover.

Out of all the horrors that could have been behind that screen door.

He didn't expect whistling, far into the distance.

Neither did Cody, who flinched and grabbed his father's bad arm.

Charlie let out a pained hiss, Cody hiding behind him the same way he used to when he was much younger.

Charlie’s radio crackled. “I made the wrong allies, Charlie, and paid a dear price. They tried to take everything from me. But here in Rapture, I found a new purpose, a new place of mentorship, of guidance. It's your choice if you and Cody want to listen.”

“That’s Ryan, right dad?”

“Yep. I don’t like him. Let’s keep going, there’s more of this place to map out.”

They went up to the second floor, Charlie taking out a couple more splicers. Cody hid on a beautiful balcony overlooking the park, Charlie barring the door once the danger had passed.

“Look at that view,” he said, gulping down some water. “Looks a little like home.”

“Yeah.” Cody said, drinking out of his own bottle. “It does.”

“The problem is getting worse. Charlie, my fan system is compromised in this area, and the air quality is starting to drop. Not by much, but I need you to find the control area and fix it. It might require you to leave Cody in the control room while you look for plant samples.”

“I don’t like leaving Cody alone, but I will look for the control room.”

“Thank you Charlie. I have to go. Dr. Tenenbaum had someone she wanted me to meet. I’m excited, I think he is going to be my Big Brother!”

They went back downstairs to the tea garden and followed the path to a room called Waterfall Grotto, a room covered wall to ceiling with moss and ivy. Charlie found a circus of values with distilled water. He bought the water out, opening the glass bottle and putting a tablet in to clean it. Even though it was still sealed, he didn’t trust it.

“Charlie, watch out!” Rapture cried. “Something went wrong with my filtering system, the air quality is dropping by the second. There’s a research lab with its own air supplies up on the third floor. I would hurry.”

Charlie grabbed Cody and ran for the stairs, dragging his son behind him as they both climbed up the stairs choking and gasping for breath as the foul air infected their lungs. Cody collapsed a third of the way up the second staircase, Charlie slinging him over his shoulder and barreling through the doors. An airtight vault door sealed behind them.

His radio clicked on.

“Julia Langford had made a serum for this exact occasion. The components are in the grotto. Here, take some equipment that I found in my storeroom.” A dumbwaiter dinged, and a suit of futuristic fire fighting gear came up with a few canisters of oxygen.

Charlie suited up, Cody waking up in time to help him attach the oxygen canisters. Before Cody could stop him, he went back into the toxic haze.

He went down the stairs and into the grotto, spotting some crates he had overlooked in favor of the circus of values. He retrieved the components, jumping out of his skin as his radio clicked on.

“Do you wonder Charlie, why the splicers wear those masks?” Silas sounded drunk. “Maybe there's a part of them that remembers how they used to be, how they used to look. And how they must be ashamed of themselves, for letting themselves stoop so low. You wouldn't befall the same fate, Charlie. You have far too much to lose.”

An alarm blared overhead, and Charlie realized that the door to the research lab was now locked shut, the whole place now in lockdown. “Cody? Cody!”

Splicers poured out of the doorways, and Charlie prepared for a fight.

Cody stepped away from the door, hearing angry shouts outside.

Not seeing anything else he could do, he tried the tape recorder he picked up earlier. The voice of Dr. Tenenbaum leaked through the speaker. “Adam acts like a benign cancer, replacing healthy native cells with unstable stem versions. Subjects need more and more Adam to keep up over time, leading to dependency.” Cody played the clip again, refusing to believe it. His father couldn’t be sick, couldn’t have made himself sick. He realized that he was getting too close to spiraling. He took a deep breath, and nearly jumped out of his skin as Rapture’s dumbwaiter gave him the enzymes.

He ran to the U- invent, selecting the only option that included the samples he had, the Lazarus Vector. He loaded it into the control panel, and flipped the switch, watching the air clear as the vector did its work.

The intercom crackled. “Oh Cody, I know you can hear me.” Mr. Ryan sounded angry.

Cody swallowed his terror. “I'm here Mr. Ryan.”

“Good. Cody, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I don't know, I haven't given it too much thought.”

“How about your brother and sister? What do they do for a living?”

“My brother Graham is a civil engineer, and my sister is a paramedic.”

“Here's some advice my boy, be an engineer, work somewhere fancy, use your daddy's connections to go to a place where you can rub elbows with the rich and famous, bag a pretty broad with more money than sense, get her knocked up a couple of times, and live that great beautiful American dream for all what little it's worth. Just promise me one thing. Don't become a fucking pig.”

“A pig?”

“A no good, bootlicking cop that only exists to tear down the strong and beat the weak. They all are pigs and feds, all of them, even your dear old dad. There's no good cops, Cody, they're all mandated by the feds to have skeletons in their closets.”

Cody opened his mouth to protest, but
Charlie got the door open, Cody pointing behind him. “Dad, there’s a-”

“I know a Big Daddy is behind me, it’s under my control and highly docile. As long as we are careful, we can slip by it.”

They moved to the next area, Cody not bringing up what Mr.Ryan had told him.

Charlie's radio flipped on, Mr. Ryan tapping on the microphone before speaking. “I believe in no god, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it's only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide. Any man who tells you differently either has his hand in your pocket, or a pistol to your neck. So, tell me Charlie, what future do you want for your boys and daughter? The Great Chain, or to be robbed at gunpoint?”

Cody hacked the next door, Charlie taking down a few splicers as he worked. The door opened into an observatory, with beautiful floor to ceiling windows. The two of them looked for supplies.

Silas took over the signal next “Up ahead is the bathysphere to Andrew Ryan’s office. Once you kill him, finding your daughter and son will get easier. The place is known as Fort Frolic, and the man currently running it is a piece of work known as Sander Cohen. You have probably seen his work in the Kashmir Restaurant. He was the person behind the masquerade ball. He’s a textbook case of psychopathy. Good luck, Charlie.”

Cody ran up to a fortune teller booth, taking a dollar out of his wallet. He pushed it into the slot, the machine lighting up and spitting a piece of paper. “Hope is finite, but Rapture is forever?” He crumpled up the paper and stuck it in his pocket. “rude.”

They used the kiosks off to the side of the door, Charlie taking a deep breath before putting his arm into the gene splicer and rearranging his plasmids.

Cody bought extra ammo and a couple vials of Eve. They walked through the door and into the canal system of Rapture Metro.

They stepped into the boat, spotlights illuminating dead bodies mounted on hooks and pedestals.

“I haven't seen a sign of real life down here in decades. Let's see if you and your progeny are just another Johnny Topside, or something more delicious.” Sanders said.

Charlie shivered, and felt Cody hide behind him. There was something predatory about Cohen.

He'd be damned before he let Cody be alone with that freak.

But first, he had a couple of splicers to deal with.

Fortunately for him, a conveniently placed pool of flaming oil killed the splicers before they could kill him and Cody. Unfortunately for them, this piqued Cohen’s interest even further.

“Oh how I love the smell of burning oil! I’ve waited so long for something new to come along, and you are just so inspiring! Where are my manners? Come in, come in! Sander Cohen awaits you at the wondrous Fleet Hall!”

They carefully skirted around the pool of still flaming oil, Charlie pushing the door open and barring it shut behind Cody. Cody crouched down to catch his breath.

“Welcome … to Fort Frolic!” Sander Cohen boomed. “No need to thank me for jamming all other signals except me and my wonderous voice! Let the non-creatives have their squabbles. This is a place of artistry! Not politics. For example, I test you little moths for a reason. I test all my disciples. Some shine like galaxies… and others, burn like moths to a flame. Come now, into my home.”

While Cohen was talking, Cody found a battery next to a dead splicer. Before Charlie could stop him, he broke a store window to grab a med kit.

Charlie heard Cohen cackle in his ear as alarms blared. He grabbed Cody by the arm and dragged him through the doors of the mall. Cody found the bot shutdown switch and pulled it as security bots swarmed the air.

They ran up the stairs and into the elevator, the sounds of screaming splicers not far behind.

They entered the lobby of Fleet Hall Theater, gentle piano music in the air. Charlie and Cody walked into the theater, listening to the pianist play.

The man playing the piano was framed by the shadows of a few other pieces of Sander Cohen’s “art”. “Please, please Cohen, please let me out of-” the man screamed as a bomb exploded, catching both him and the stage on fire.

“Come down now. Life, death … the burden of the artist is to capture!” Cohen chuckled. “See young Fitzpatrick on the stage? Use your camera … take him as he is now … so I may remember him.”

Cody shivered, handing Charlie the camera. Cody backed away from the stage as Charlie climbed onto it.

He snapped a photo, Cohen singing his praises over the speakers.

“I would run, my moths, Fitzpatrick’s glorious performance has attracted special attention. Run to the atrium, my masterpiece awaits you.”

They raced to the atrium, the sounds of splicers not far behind.

“Find my masterpiece, little moths!” Cohen cackled.

The two Burns ducked through the halls of the Atrium, looking for more of the haunting statues.

It was Cody who found the stage. “Dad! It's here!”

“Don't you see it? Get close, get close.” Cody waited for his dad, Charlie walking ahead of him. He walked up to the statue, Cohen giggling in his ear. “Put the photo in the frame, then accept my gifts.”

Charlie faced the statue of a man in a bunny mask, kneeling and offering him a wooden crossbow. He took it.

“This gift comes with a promise. Take down my former disciples, and bring the photos back, and you may keep the crossbow, and go to Ryan. The door to Poseidon Plaza is now open to both of you little moths. First step is to kill my old pal Martin Finnagan.”

Charlie led the way to Poseidon Plaza, both of them shivering as they walked through the frozen tunnel. Charlie lit up his arm with incinerate, the ice melting off of the wall as he walked.

The freezer was full of frozen splicers.

They were everywhere, and as Charlie walked closer, the ice on them cracked. Charlie brought out his crossbow, shooting the closest splicer. The splicer shattered, and he made quick work of the rest of them.

Charlie and Cody started to explore the rest of the freezer.

That didn't last long, as ice climbed up their feet and froze them still. Martin got in Charlie's face with a grin.

“Oh, there's two of you this time. How quaint. Still, I don't think you two can stop me. But let's give you a shot.”

The ice cracked, and Charlie broke free, rushing at him with the crossbow.

The bolt hit home. Charlie snapped a picture of the corpse before melting Cody out of the ice. Miraculously, the ice didn't seem to harm him.

Once outside of the freezer, Charlie shot down a few splicers on the ceiling, Cody hacking the vending machine while the splicers were distracted.

“Next up is Silas Cobb. He should be at the old records store.”

They retreated into the nearby casino, looking for the record store.

Cody found it in the back corner, and with a nod from his father, he hacked the door.

Apparently, he did it wrong, because a proximity bomb went off, missing both Charlie and Cody but alerting Cobb to their presence.

“Are you Cohen's messenger boy? Well that's the last mistake you will ever make.”

“Shit. Cody, climb through the vents while I fight.”

Cody didn't have time to argue, grabbing the camera and pistol and running for the vent.

Miraculously, he took down Cobb with a single bullet, tears welling in his eyes as he fumbled for the camera.

He took the photo, and looked for a way to help his dad up to the second floor.

He ducked into a nearby hotel room, tying together the bedsheets into a makeshift rope. He bashed in a window, clearing out the glass with a broken chair leg.

He tied the rope to the bed, throwing the rest down to his dad.

He climbed it easily, Cody offering his hand for a final boost into the room.

Charlie's radio crackled. “You two flutter all around the Fort, taking life as you go. You aren't moths… your angels. I’ve never sculpted an angel before… maybe I should.” Cohen giggled.

They entered yet another casino, Cody taking what little money they could find there.

Charlie spotted a Big Daddy with two identical Little Sisters and a short man in a Big Daddy mask but no suit, four Adam needles strapped to his left hand.

The Big Daddy spotted them, roaring with anger and charging at Charlie, knocking the smaller Big Daddy over the railing, falling two stories and smashing his helmet on the tile floor.

He convulsed a few times before dragging himself under the staircase.

Cody looked down in horror. “Dad?”

“Busy!” Charlie yelled, using a flaming crossbow bolt to take down a splicer crawling on the ceiling. It fell on the Big Daddy, lighting it on fire too. Two more ceiling climbing splicers had to be shot down before Charlie could focus his attention on the Big Daddy. The fight wasn’t too flashy, Charlie dodging the Big Daddy’s fist and drill while the twin Little Sisters tried to trip and push him into the Big Daddy’s drill.

“He - help. Help?” the man clawed at his mask, Cody cautiously creeping down the stairs.

Charlie quickly cured both of the girls and followed him, the little ones finding a tunnel to hide in and climb to safety.

Cody waited at the bottom of the stairs for his dad, Charlie crouching down and meeting the man’s eye through the frosted yellow glass of the helmet. “Do you need help? Can I help you get the helmet off?”

The man pushed up the lip of the helmet, and Charlie helped lift the heavy piece of equipment off his head.

He set it aside, and looked back at the man to realize he was maybe sixteen at most. He had scabbed over needle marks on his neck and temples, dirt, blood, and tears caked onto his face.

He had the same clammy gray skin and glowing yellow eyes as the Little Sisters, his black hair greasy and falling into his eyes.

“No, don't - where's my - my moooom.” His voice cracked, his head in his hands. The boy’s voice had an odd tone, tinny and hoarse, almost like he was speaking through a machine.

“What's your name?” Charlie asked, taking off his backpack and digging out a med kit.

“Jake? Jackie? No, no, it's Jack. Short for Jackson, but I like Jack better.”

“Jack? Ok, Jack, can you patch yourself up or would you like my help?”

“Help, help me please.”

Charlie cleaned Jack's face with some water, giving the rest of the bottle to Jack.

Jack instead took off his Adam needles and gulped down the Adam.

“Please don't - too late.” Charlie grimaced.

“I’m hungry. I haven't been hungry in a while.” Jack curled in on himself, Cody pulling out a snack bar from his bag.

Jack scarfed it down, Charlie spotting something metallic embedded in the roof of his mouth.

“Jack, does your mouth hurt?”

“Sore, but I will be ok.”

“Here, take some water.” Cody handed Jack a bottle. He drank greedily, handing the empty bottle back. Cody gave him another, and he took a couple sips before setting it aside.

“Help.” He said. “Hugs.” He pointed to Charlie. “You gave the Little Sisters hugs, and the Adam stopped. I want it to stop.”

Charlie's heart softened. “Of course, Jack.” He gave him a hug, surprised by the sheer volume of Adam that transferred to him. Jack cried, Charlie letting him hug him for as long as he’d like. Jack finally pulled away from him, brushing away a few tears.

*I'm sorry, it's just -”

“You're fine, Jack. Let's get the three of us home safe.”

Jack nodded, and smiled at Cody. “What's your name?”

“Cody. That's my dad.” he pointed to Charlie.

“You can call me Charlie.” He said, offering him his hand.

Jack shook it. “Could we go? Being here gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah dad, let's go.”

“We are looking for a couple of men that angered a man named Sanders Cohen. He knows how to find a way to Andrew Ryan.”

“I’ve never heard of either of those names.” Jack admitted. “Though I don't think I have a choice except to tag along with you guys.”

Cody smiled. “Noble! Come on, dad. I think we should check the department stores for supplies.”

The first department store yielded a few expired first aid kits. The second one has nothing but mold.

Walking through yet another department store yielded money, and a creepy hallway full of more of Cohen's statues, but not the third man Cohen sent them to hunt. They finally stopped just before going into a basement shop, a shared feeling of dread going down their spines.

“Why do I feel like there's going to be something terrible down there?” Cody said, staring at the neon sign pointing down the stairs.

“Just think happy thoughts. There might even be an exit, or one of your brothers or sister down there.”

“I miss the bots.”

“Me too.”

Jack stayed silent, staring down the stairs.

The basement was flooded up to their ankles, mannequins dotting the room, the clothes long rotted away.

Cody looked back and fired Charlie’s pistol, a plaster covered splicer splashing into the water. He shot another one before the two of them made a hasty retreat. “Some of the statues aren't statues.” He explained.

They climbed up the stairs, Charlie taking out two more plaster covered splicers. They took a left, and walked into the establishment advertised as Eve’s Garden.

“Oh.” Jack said, looking up at the stripper pole displayed prominently in the lobby of the club.

“So?” Cody said, not understanding Jack's embarrassment.

“Um… I will let your dad explain it to you.”

“Hey! Youuuuu therrreeee! Co -cohen sennnn-”

Before Henry could slur his words any farther, Charlie shot him. He took the photo, and they returned to Cohen's masterpiece.

The room was dark, spotlights illuminating the masterpiece and the top of the grand staircase facing the stage.

Cohen strutted down the stairs, bragging about his previous masterpieces. He admired his work. “I must applaud you - you worked quickly. The path to Ryan is now clear. Now, get out of my sight, all of you.”

They didn't need to be told twice.

Jack, Charlie, and Cody piled into the bathysphere headed for Hephaestus.

Jack chose to stay with the Burns.

Charlie wasn't surprised.

“Here's the plan. I kill Ryan, and you two stay safe and stay together. Cody, you keep the pistols, and Jack, you take the wrench. I want you to follow me into Hephaestus, but as soon as you two find a good place to hide, I want you to take shelter, and stay there. Got it?”

“Yes dad.”

“Got it sir.”

Charlie smiled. “I'm so proud of both of you. We’re so close to the end, I’m sure of it. Once we are up on the surface, we can get help and an actual rescue operation going, we can get the Little Sisters free.”

They walked through the glass tubes and into the bowels of Hephaestus.

Immediately, they were ambushed.

Jack wisely ducked behind Cody and Charlie as they shot at the splicers.

Eventually, there were only bodies to loot, and the three of them followed the sign to the office of Andrew Ryan.

They ran into yet another ambush, this time a whole hoard of particularly nimble splicers.

Cody spied a U- invent machine, and taught Jack how to use it. Once Cody made enough ammunition, the group moved on to the next grand hall - one whose pillars were lined with corpses.

Charlie’s radio popped on. “A worm looks up and sees the face of God!” Ryan chuckled. “But look around … it's a regular convention of worms here. They all had mothers, fathers. People who loved them. Charlie, what makes you and your children any different?”

Charlie couldn't respond. By the look of things, he would have to sabotage at least one of the Hephaestus cores around the room, but it was a toss up on which one would ruin the factory without seriously injuring Rapture.

He made a guess, and threw a pipe bomb at the nearest core.

The thing exploded with a shower of blue light, but thankfully didn't catch the inner workings of the machine on fire. The factory shut down, the lights flickering.

Charlie’s radio clicked on. “Rapture has always been filled with such youthful energy. I did my best to make sure he would idolize me.” Ryan said.

Charlie did his best to ignore him.

They passed a dead Big Daddy, Jack patting it on the head.

They went through the next door, and found another Big Daddy fighting a splicer near a set of control panels.

They snuck downstairs to the heat loss monitoring offices, blocking the door with an overturned Circus of Values.

Of course, that was the moment when the lights cut out.

The three of them froze, laughter echoing from deep within the machines.

As soon as the lights hit back on, they ran, Jack sandwiching himself between Cody and Charlie.

They froze again when the lights went out twice more.

As such, they were unprepared when the corpses started to move.

Charlie didn't hesitate to pull out the machine gun. He mowed down the splicers , keeping the teens moving forward until they could seal the door behind them.

Inner Hephaestus was a labyrinth of hallways. Tubes of red liquid lined the ceiling, sparkling in the light. They followed the catwalks, searching for any sign of Ryan.

After what felt like hours of searching and killing splicers, they made it to Ryan's office, walking into a firefight between a couple of splicers and a dozen security drones.

“Oh please don't hurt Mr. Ryan!” Rapture cried, Charlie turning off his police radio and handing it to Jack in preparation of what he had to do.

“You can kill me, but you can never have Rapture. He bends, and will always bend, to my will. You hear me! Rapture is mine!” Ryan screamed.

Cody hacked one last door, and the three of them walked into the waiting room.

Andrew Ryan looked up from his mini golf course, smirking at Charlie. “Charlie, would you kindly tell me what separates a man from a slave? Money, power? No. A man chooses. A slave obeys. I see now that you were a police officer in your old life. How does it feel being the ultimate slave? Come in.”

The door opened.

Charlie wiped the muck off his police badge, and turned to the boys. “Cody, give me the pistols.” Cody handed them over without a word. “Stay here, and for the love of God, don't watch me kill this man.”

The two boys shared a look before nodding.

“Yes sir.”

“Of course, dad.”

Chief Burns took a deep breath, and entered Ryan's office.

“Ah, Charlie. Come in, come in. Would you like a glass of wine? Coffee?”

“I'm good, thank you.”

“Ah, how polite, for someone who came to kill me. A polite assassin. How quaint.”

“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Ryan.”

“Charlie, isn't it? Or do you prefer Charles?”

“Chief Burns is fine.”

“Alright, Chief it is. And how’s the children?”

“My daughter and two of my sons are missing. My youngest is waiting outside.”

“And who is the dark haired fellow? A family friend? Or someone you met along the way?”

Charlie frowned. “I don't know.”

“Oh? What an interesting choice. I know a lot about choices. You and your boys have more free will than most of the fellows down here. So, what are you going to do? Walk away, or kill me?”

Chief Burns drew his pistol, putting one bullet into the chamber.

Andrew Ryan smiled.

And Charlie, well, Chief Burns, ended their conversation with a bang.

Chief Burns grabbed the handkerchief from Ryan's pocket and wiped away the blood on his face. He found a bathroom off to the side of the office, grabbing a hand towel and stepping out of the office.

Cody didn't meet his eyes.

“You looked, didn't you?”

Cody nodded.

Charlie closed his eyes. “I am so sorry you had to see that. Jack, I need a bottle of water.” Jack handed him the water, and he washed the blood from his hands and scrubbed his face. “Let's get out of here.”

They walked out through a side door into a more traditional office area. Though the floor made a horrendous cracking sound, they still chose that spot to take a rest, Cody taking off his pack and throwing it into a divot in the floor.

With a resounding bang, the floor caved in.

Jack was the first one to wake up from their disastrous fall.

“You three have saved many of my little ones. I owe you a debt. Jack, I owe you an apology. You would have made a spectacular Big Daddy, and it's a shame it wasn't meant to be.” Jack turned towards a corner apartment. Dr. Tennenbaum was pacing behind the window, Lady El sleeping in the bed behind her, her mask discarded on the floor.

“Who is she? The woman who's sleeping?”

“The Little Sisters call her Lady El. But up topside, her name is Dani. Really, what's wrong with Danielle! Much prettier than that tomboy nickname, but considering her choppy haircut, it seemed par for the course for our lovely Lady El.” Tennenbaum drew the curtains, and Jack turned to his still unconscious allies.

“Guys. Guys, get up.” Charlie groaned, but Cody didn't stir.

“Cody?” Charlie slapped his son's face lightly, Cody's head flopping in his efforts to wake him up. “CODY!”

Cody didn't respond, his skin pale and clammy. Charlie handing Jack his bag and picking up his son's off the ground. “Jack, we need to find a med station.”

“Med station? Those needle things?”

Charlie shifted his son into a fireman's carry. “Jack, pay attention. I can't carry him and protect you.”

“Yes sir.”

They found a med station hidden by a janitor's closet, and with Jack’s help, Charlie stuck Cody’s arm under the needle of the med station. Jack fed the money into the machine, and Charlie flinched as a needle the length of his pinky plunged into his son's arm. The IV fluid bag attached to the machine drained into his arm. Almost immediately, color returned to Cody's skin, his eyes fluttering open.

“Dad? What happened?”

“We triggered a trap, and you hit your head pretty hard. Do you feel alright? Any dizziness, blurry vision, brain fog? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three. My head feels fine. Where are we?”

“Some sort of low income apartment block.” Jack answered, handing Cody his pack.

He put it on, looking up to his dad. “Where to next?”

A cured Little Sister ran out of the shadows, a few vials of Eve in her arms. “Hi!” She said. “Mama Tennenbaum sent me to find you. Wait!” She handed Cody the vials and made a bee line for Jack. “Big Brother!” She crushed Jack in a hug. “Big Brother I missed you! Big Sister says hello, she was so sad when you left! I gotta show you the safe house! All my sisters are there, and Mama Tennebaum said that you guys can come too! We got food and games and hopscotch, come on already!”

They followed her through twisting hallways and hidden passageways to a duplex, taking the back entrance.

The walls of the safehouse were lined with bunk beds, with stuffed toys and the occasional candle lining the stone floor.

Inside the safehouse was the entrance to another apartment like the one Jack had seen Dr. Tenenbaum in before, this time set up as a makeshift infirmary. Inside, Dani was laying down on a gurney, Dr. Tennenbaum replacing the bandages over a nasty cut in her side and an incision down her front. Her eyes were yellow, her skin the same sickly green as the uncured Little Sister coloring on the floor. The Little Sister hummed, Dani humming with her as she stared up at the ceiling. She had a pleasant smile on her face, as if it was sculpted there by whatever serum or surgery turns a bright young woman into a Big Sister.

“Dani?” Charlie whispered. “DANI!” He ran up to the window, pounding on it.

Dani shrieked, covering her ears and jerking away from Dr. Tennenbaum. The Little Sister grabbed Dani’s arm and injected her with her Adam splicer. Dani relaxed back onto the bed, resuming her humming. The Little Sister went back to coloring.

Charlie stumbled back from the window, another uncured Little Sister running up to him and offering him a hug. He took the opportunity to cure her, and she stole his police badge in exchange. She ran back to a group of both uncured and cured Little Sisters coloring in a circle.

Charlie sat down with them and retrieved his badge, curing the Little Sisters and taking their gifts of a few pictures. He folded them up and put them in the waterproof sleeve with the pictures of his children. “Thank you girls.”

“You have saved many of my Little Ones. I owe you a debt.” He turned back to Dr. Tennenbaum in time to see her draw the curtains of the infirmary window shut.

“We should go.” Charlie said, meeting Cody’s eyes.

He was showing off his mask to the Little Sister that had been their guide. “Jack, are you ready?”

Jack nodded, picking up a discarded backpack. He emptied it of half broken toys and stale energy bars, bringing it over to Charlie. “I should probably help split the load.”

“Sounds like a good idea. Cody, over here!”

Cody and the Little Sister jogged over to Jack and Charlie. “What’s going on dad?”

“Split your pack with Jack. Keep at least half your water and food, and I want him to carry the spare ammo for the machine gun and shotgun. I will trade it for more pistol ammo and another first aid kit. That means I can have an extra Eve.”

“That makes sense to me sir.” Jack replied, kneeling down to help Cody sort out the supplies.

Another Little Sister ran up to them and gave them a vial of Adam, which Charlie promptly took and thanked the girl.

“Come with me!” Their guide squeaked, grabbing Charlie’s hand. Jack and Cody quickly put on their packs, the three of them following the Little Sister past a pair of Little Sisters hosting a tea party and up a hidden back staircase.

Up the stairs, Cody was quickly pulled into a game of hopscotch, being rewarded with a vial of Eve for playing along. They stopped in front of a door, a cut out at the bottom barely big enough to fit a crouching Little Sister. Their guide went through it, opening the door from the other side. With a wave, she left the trio to return to the other Little Sisters.

The doors led to an abandoned sewer.

“Should we follow it?” Jack asked.

“I don’t see any other options, Dad.” Cody replied, looking down into the bleak nothingness ahead.

Before Charlie could respond, his radio crackled on.

“I see you have allied yourself with Dr. Tennenbaum.” Silas said, his disdain for the doctor clear. “She's not quite the motherly type, but I guess with your daughter under her thumb, you don't have many choices there.”

Cody noticed something that the others didn’t. “Dad, the winch to open the sewer gate is broken. We are trapped inside.”

“Well, what’s missing?”

“A wheel piece, dad.”

Charlie sighed. “It has to be in here somewhere. Help me look for it.”

After nearly an hour of searching, they found it behind a corpse. Cody put the winch back together, and they emerged from the sewers onto a railway track.

They walked along the track, finding a railway station at the end of the track. They took a break then, eating together while looking through the station’s window out to a fantastic view of Rapture and the surrounding ocean.

Once they finished eating, they entered the station, the walls papered with propaganda posters among the advertisements and signs. Charlie bought a few tonics from a Gatherer’s Garden, his eyes glowing faintly as he drank the sugary sweet concoction.

They left the station and walked along the train tracks, encountering a couple of splicers and a lone Big Daddy, his Little Sister nowhere to be found. Eventually, the tunnels spat them out in front of a luxury apartment block.

“Mercury Suites? Sounds expensive.” Charlie said, looking up at the huge signs.

“Yep. I would definitely get bullied by the people who lived here.” Jack remarked, running up the stairs. Cody gave him a confused look. “What? We can’t all be the sons of police chiefs.”

They walked into the lobby, slipping past a group of fighting splicers and into the main foyer.

“This is way too fancy. Should I wipe my shoes or something?” Jack asked, doing just that.

“Sure, if you want to. I don’t think this place has been lived in for a long while.”

A loudspeaker crackled. “I hear your wings flapping in my home… flip flap flip flap. Come into the light, little moths, come in. Welcome to my home” The apartment directly in front of them lit up with spotlights, posters advertising Sander Cohen’s shows decorating the inside of his luxury penthouse.

The first room they entered was a ruined dining room, the furniture smashed and the carpet ripped. Part of the ceiling had caved in, crushing a still twitching splicer. Charlie took it out of its misery and they moved on.

They went back to the foyer to find a pair of splicers waltzing in the ballroom just past the foyer. The three of them snuck into the room to the right, finding a library engulfed in flame, a silenced sprinkler system doing a very poor job of putting out the flames. Seeing no choice, Cody and Jack followed Charlie’s lead as he snuck behind a piano placed in the corner of the ballroom.

Unfortunately, Cody is not one for stealth. Especially when encumbered by a backpack that’s ⅔ the weight of himself.

He tripped over a loose tile, got his backpack caught on the corner of the piano, and by then, it was too late to hide.

Cody and Jack ducked for cover behind the piano, Charlie wasting precious seconds whipping out his machine gun. He opened fire, spraying the ballroom with bullets, gunning down one of the splicers but missing the other one entirely.

Charlie instead lobbed a ball of fire in the surviving splicer’s face, narrowly dodging his fiery hug of death and finishing him off with a gratuitous amount of machine gun rounds into its head.

The three of them went upstairs, the upstairs of the apartment just as opulent as the downstairs. The walls echoed with their footsteps as they passed countless posters advertising Cohen’s past shows.

Of course, the peace and quiet never lasted long.

Maniacal laughter echoed over their heads as Cohen himself showed his face. Before he could launch into a grand speech, Cody took him down with a perfectly placed headshot.

And before Charlie could stop him, Jack took a picture of the corpse out of spite.

Charlie didn’t know whether or not to be proud or terrified by this development.
“Well, I vote we keep exploring the place.” Jack said, still staring at the corpse.

“Me too.” Cody agreed, taking a drink of water wrapping new scrapes on his hands. “I mean, we are here. We could probably find some first aid kits. Mine is getting low.”

Charlie signed. “Fine. We see what we can find, and we get out.

Unfortunately for them, the first room they found was Cohen’s bedroom, complete with bunny masks and plastered over corpses.

“Oh I am not going in there.” Jack said, crossing his arms. “This room is a trap and probably contaminated by one too many of Cohen’s masterpieces. Agree?”

“Good point, Jack.” Charlie replied. “Cody?”

“Absolutely not.”

They made a quick exit, Charlie finding a hidden Circus of Values in the lobby.
“Dad, I think there’s four levels to this place.” Cody said.

“Looks like it son. Jack, anything else to add?”

“I think I was here when I was one of those Little Sister things.”

Charlie sighed, reevaluated his life choices. Starting with his choice to ever be born.

“Hey dad! I found an elevator!” Cody yelled. The three of them grouped around the thing, staring at it like it held mystical treasure.

“Anyone come across any sticky notes while in the house of horrors?” Jack asked, looking at the keypad.

“Nope.”

“No, unfortunately.”

They went up to the second floor, trying the doors. Only one was unlocked, and the three of them slipped inside. Immediately, they knew the place was abandoned. Their attempts at exploration was cut short when they found the former occupants of the apartment all dead on the couch. They left quickly, heading up to the third floor.

One side of the landing was blocked off, forcing them to go in the other direction.

The first apartment they entered looked like it had caught fire. Most of the wallpaper was gone, the ceiling caved in and most of the furniture trashed.

There were signs of multiple abandoned attempts at squatting, and they heard voices upstairs.

They made a quick retreat, huddling together.

“Are you sure we want to go in there? There’s more than one unexplored apartment on the first floor?” Charlie asked.

“I get a bad feeling about that apartment, dad.”

“Ditto. Something just doesn’t feel right about that place.”

They walked past the apartment and found what looked like a photographer’s set up. Cody found an audio diary hidden in a duffel bag with yet another camera. He handed this one to Charlie, and pressed play on the diary. “Hey boss, it’s Fossy. I got a hot tip that Fountaine reset his door code to 5744 to keep out folks like us. By the photos in my folder, you can see I put that tip to good use.”

“So.” Jack said, taking the audio diary out of Cody’s hands and throwing it aside. “We need to go downstairs, I take it?”

“Dad, who’s Fountaine?”

“He was the guy who owned the fishing company, remember the docks?”

“Yeah, that’s the place where we found out that Dr, Tennenbaum took Dani.”

They hurried downstairs, Cody inputting the door code and following Jack and Charlie inside.

Once the door was sealed, Dr. Tennenbaum spoke. “They say to save one life is to save the world entirely. I made a place for the children here, but it's you, Charlie, who are their savior. Will you stop when you find your lost children, or will you deliver all of them from this city at long last?”

“I want you to give me my daughter back.”

“Your daughter is Danielle, correct? Know that she is far happier a nursemaid to my children than working tirelessly at a man’s job just to be passed over and considered as lesser. I should know.”

“You don’t - she’s the highest ranked EMT on the island! She saves lives every day. She’s loved, she is so, so loved. Please, let her come home with us, with me.” Charlie pleaded.

But it was for not. Dr. Tennenbaum had selfishly made up her mind, and Charlie knew it.

The elevator spit them out on the penthouse level.

“I need two plasmids, one called Lot 192, and another called Lot 526.” Tennenbaum explained. “It’s in this apartment somewhere. When you find them, give them to a Little Sister. Anything else is yours to keep.”

“We need more water. Any sealed distilled water needs to be repurified before you drink it.”

“Yes sir.” Jack said. He wondered why he put so much stock into Charlie just because of his badge. He had done fine with him and Miko and Raf, who’s to say that he didn't have a shot alone? But staying with Cody and Charlie was comfortable. And he needed all the comfort he could get down here.

They didn't split up, staying together and moving from wood paneled room to wood paneled room, large windows out to the ocean making the place feel roomy and open.

In the main foyer, a massive taxidermied grizzly bear stood on its haunches.

“Nice bear statue.” Jack remarked.

Charlie ducked into a den, grabbing a research journal with the bottled up compounds, placing both in his bag.

“I heard of a bathysphere in Apollo’s Square. I think you should investigate.” Dr. Tennenbaum sounded tense, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On their way back to the elevator, Jack spotted a couple of Little Sisters, and with a click of his tongue, handed off the two compounds to the girls.

The elevator spat them out in the middle of a ruined rail station. Missing posters plastered the walls, rubble covering the floor, clumps of plaster missing from the walls.

Off in the distance, a Big Daddy roared, drowned out by gunfire.

“So, where to, dad?” Cody grabbed onto his dad’s backpack, listening to the Big Daddy’s cries of rage. He looked up, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “Dad, there's a gallows up ahead.” Charlie looked up. Directly above their heads, there were rotted sacks of bones, the hanging victims having been tied into garbage bags before they were killed. There were a half dozen of them on the same support post, the bodies so old they no longer stunk of rot.

As they got closer to Apollo Square, more improvised gallows could be seen in the shadows, as it became increasingly obvious that poverty was the ultimate crime in a city run by Andrew Ryan - propaganda calling for the deaths of so-called leeches on every street corner. Anti homeless architecture was everywhere, spikes on front stoops and not a single bench or flat surface in sight. Everything was sloped so anyone who sat down would be sitting in a puddle of filth, as the sewers stunk and overflowed onto the street.

Cody ducked into an overturned trolley car and came out with a tin of machine gun rounds. “Here dad, I found some for you.”

Charlie smiled and took them from him. “Thanks son. Jack, how are you holding up? Need any water or food?”

Jack shook his head. “I saw a flyer for a boarding house down the street. If it isn't in too bad a shape, we could sleep there for the night.”

“Sounds like a plan. Cody, you agree?”

Cody yawned. “Yeah, I could use some sleep, dad.”

They walked to the boarding house, the place surprisingly clean considering the state of things.

Miraculously, the bulk of the mattresses were visibly free of mold. Cody took Elle the Elephant out of Charlie’s pack and curled up on a bottom bunk, falling asleep immediately.

“I will take the first watch, you take the second.” Jack said, pulling over a few discarded mattresses. “Cody needs sleep, and so do you.”

“Fine. but wake me up after two hours.”

Jack did not wake him up after two hours.

Jack woke him up after four.

“You were suppose to-”

“Shush, Cody is still sleeping. You stay awake, and wake me up when Cody does.”

Cody stirred, and Jack slipped into the bottom bunk.

Charlie kept his hand on his gun for three more hours, Cody waking up with a huff.

“Dad? Where are we?” He said sleeply.

“Rapture, remember?”

“Oh. I thought that was a dream.”

Charlie smiled sadly. “I wished it was a dream too, son. Wake up Jack for me, and we can head out into the city center.”

Cody grinned and poked Jack until he woke up. “What? Mom … there's no school to - oh. It wasn't a dream. Hi Cody.”

“Wakey - wakey Jack! Time to go.”

Jack wiped his eyes, frowning as he wiped his eyes. The crusty bits he picked off his eyelashes were a synthetic glowing blue.

They got their stuff together and left the boarding house. Walking along the cracked sidewalk, Jack looked up and made a discovery. “Guys, it looks like there's a medical center on the second floor.”

they went up the stairs to the second floor, Charlie keeping a hand on his gun the whole time.

“I didn’t expect there to be free clinics down here.” Jack remarked, stopping to tie his shoe under the clinic’s sign.

“There's good people everywhere, Jack.” Charlie replied, still on high alert. The place was just a bit too quiet, no one had tried to kill them since getting to Apollo Square, and he wasn't all that grateful for the uneasy quiet.

“Huh, it’s sponsored by Fontaine.” Cody said, pointing at the sign.

He didn't take his eyes off it as he backed into the doorway of the clinic.

Before Charlie could stop him, he stepped back into the clinic.

The alarms blared, red light flooding the corridors as Charlie grabbed both of the bots and shoved them into the clinic, uncaring of the cameras as shouts echoed in the distance. “Cody, shut down those cameras. Jack, sit tight. You two are going to be ok, I swear. Cody, your gun?” Cody handed it over, and Charlie reloaded it. “Use it.” he commanded, turning around and shooting one of the cameras. He left the clinic.

Cody got to work hacking the other cameras, Jack standing watch with his wrench.

They split up, Jack breaking into the filing cabinets while Cody combed through the little side rooms.

Cody opened a hidden exam room. He stumbled back and screamed, Jack running to him. “Cody?”

“Blood.” He pointed to the exam table in the middle of the room. “Blood. So much-”

The doctor on the table was in pieces, a drill bit wedged into his stomach, his mouth frozen in a scream.

“It was a Big Daddy.” Cody whispered, pointing to the long dried bloody footprints on the floor. “Jack, I want to get out of here.”

More gunshots rang out below them. “I don't think we can, Cody.” Jack whispered back, putting his hands on the younger boy’s shoulders and leading him away from the grisly sight. “But we can hide somewhere else.” He pulled out a glowing tonic from the dead doctor’s fingers. “I got some Eve out of one of the medicine cabinets. Let's head back to the main room and hide somewhere safe until your dad comes back”

“Yeah.” Cody was crying silently. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Jack dragged him away from the room and behind the receptionist’s desk.

The gunfire stopped, the two boys didn't dare breathe as they listened for any sign of a victor.

“Boys?” Charlie's voice was a welcome relief. He walked into the clinic, Jack peeking out from behind the desk.

He popped up once he knew they were safe, pulling the shorter boy onto his feet.

“We should go. I got all the Eve I could find.” Jack pulled Cody towards the exit.

“The back rooms?”

“Don't want to know.” Jack whispered, pulling out a roll of crackers. “Cody, eat.”

Cody begrudgingly shoved a cracker in his mouth before putting the rest in his pack.

“Oh Charlie.” The intercom crackled. “What can I really do for these Little Ones? I am tainted by sins. But you … perhaps you can unlock a future for them that I cannot even imagine … please be careful.”

“Like the future you stole from my daughter? Please, please let me take my Dani home.”

“You know I can't let you do that. Her home is Rapture now. Go to Fountaine’s Home for the Poor. There should be supplies there.”

Cody looked around the square, finding a directory with a map. “Hey guys!” He said, taking a brochure with a smaller version of the map printed on the back. “I found a way there! Wait, this is a paper map. Dad, could you please help?”

“Sure. Do you know how to use one of these?”

“Nope. They don't teach us that in scouts anymore.”

Charlie sighed. “Of course they don't. Ok, you see this compass rose? Turn so you line up with it. It's not entirely necessary, but it helps if you're really lost. This only works if you are indoors.”

Cody nodded, figuring it out. “The home is that way.” He pointed.

“Huh, Vincent always wanted me to die in one of these. Said it's a shame that they don't exist anymore.” Jack kicked in one of the rotting decorative wooden panels mounted on the main doors. “Little he knows, Optimus paid off the mortgage, so ha.”

“That's… an interesting fun fact.” Cody stammered.

“Hey, at least my mom doesn't have to rely on my paycheck anymore.”

Cody looked up at Charlie, and Charlie decided to ignore his discomfort and the whole conversation.

They made it to the poor house.

The place looked a lot more welcoming than expected, with abandoned laundry hung up to dry and posters advertising community events on the walls.

The thing that wasn't welcome was the turret mounted on the central balcony overlooking the staircase into the upstairs orphanage house, the poor house underneath.

Charlie took a risk and used the shotgun on it, thankfully taking it down in one shot.

Rapture clicked on the jukebox plugged into the lobby. “Hi. I figured out how to connect to these things. You're a really great shot, Charlie. I don't have anything else to say, just that the Little Sisters orphanage might have some medical stuff, but I would go to Fontaine’s Home for the Poor first, ‘cause stairs are annoying.”

“Thanks, Rapture.” Cody chirped.

“I like helping.”

The home was mostly made up of bunkrooms. There was a bathroom and shower room off to the side.

“I think I found a hidden door!” Cody yelled, pulling up a bit of peeling wallpaper.

“Let me open it. Both of you, out of the way.” Charlie loaded up his shotgun and opened the door with the muzzle of the gun.

The office was empty, except for the posters.

The floor of the office was covered in papers and posters, all proclaiming the same thing.

“ATLAS lives?” Charlie questioned.

“It looks like some type of resistance group.” Jack said, touching a poster spread out on the table. It crumbled under his touch.

“Noble!” Cody whispered.

Jack snuck away, poking his head into a back room. “Guys? I think we stumbled upon the headquarters of someone who wanted to stage a coup”

“That’s a lot of guns.” Cody said.

“Yep. And both of you are going to take three big steps away from them.”

Both kids hastily obeyed, Charlie getting between them and the gun stash. He retrieved the gun ammunition with his telekinesis.

Jack found a tonic, and a small safe.

Charlie broke it open and took the cash and Eve inside.

They went upstairs.

The orphanage lobby was bright and colorful, with faded murals and children’s drawings on the walls.

They went into the main girl’s dorm, a row of beds against opposite walls.

A duffle bag was sitting on the nearest bed.

“That's Dani’s bag.” Cody tried to pick it up, but it was too heavy. “Ah, poo. It’s too heavy. He unzipped it, just for a Little Sister to pop out of it.

She giggled, and Charlie grabbed her to drain her Adam. She struggled in his arms, and he let her go.

Jack and Charlie scoped out the winding rooms of the orphanage, Cody staying put in the lobby with both pistols.

As soon as Cody was out of sight, Charlie injected two vials of Eve into his wrist, the tension leaving his body as he reloaded the machine gun. “Went too long without doing that.” He explained. “Didn't want to worry Cody.”

“Are you sure you are ok, sir? You've taken a lot of that stuff, and the Adam from the Little Sisters…” Jack trailed off, Charlie clearly not up to talk.

“I do what I need to. Let's grab what we can.”

They heard gunshots off in the distance.

“Dad! Dad, help!” Cody shouted.

“Cody?”

Charlie and Jack ran for him. They found Cody hiding under a bed, a vial of eve in his hands and the splicer mask over his face, a splicer brute pacing outside the room.

“Come on out, Little Brother. I want your spoils.”

Charlie shocked him, the brute falling to his knees, blood leaking from his ears and eyes.

“Come on, I don't know what I was thinking, leaving you back there.” Charlie said, offering his son a hand. “Stay with me, you did good, hiding away and calling for help.”

Cody pulled off the mask. “It worked a little bit. I was able to hide from a couple more in the foyer with it. It's not perfect, but it got me here without a fight.”

Jack caught up to them. “We should keep moving. Unless we are hungry?”

“No, we should keep moving.” Cody clung to his father.

Charlie started breaking down doors to find what he could.

He was disgusted by the number of rooms for what he assumed to be for girls isolated for the Little Sister program. There were more than one machine set up in various rooms with the sole purpose to be a Pavlov machine loaded with candy, Adam, and enough blinking lights and noises to keep a very young child focused on the repetitive task for hours.

He made Jack and Cody wait outside while he searched the main lab, shivering as he stepped around a small operating table with even smaller restraints, bins of rusted instruments and decayed serums scattered around the room. He grabbed a few vials of Eve that hadn't been spoiled by rust, and got out of there before he could convince himself that he could feel the fear of all the little girls who were hurt in that room.

He gave Cody a hug as he shut the door.

“We should keep looking.”

Charlie’s radio buzzed.

“Now that you have gathered what you can, go to Point Prometheus. Silas is there, I'm sure you wish to have a nice chat with him. I don’t know where your son is, but he has more eyes in the city than I do. Remember, you have no reason to trust him.” Dr. Tennenbaum warned.

“Give me my sister back, Dr. Tennenbaum.” Cody shouted into the radio. “We've done everything we asked, I just want to bring her home.”

“Man up, little boy. Whining does nothing. Seriously Charlie, you can't just put up with that kind of insubordination like that. It wouldn't kill you to pop him once or twice to cure that mouth of his.”

“I'm not going to beat my boy just because you don't like him.”

“Wait, is that why we don't-”

“Yes, it's why Woodrow is the only extended bio family you have. And to be brutally honest, he’s on thin ice.”

Tennenbaum took the opportunity to cut the line.

Charlie swore. “Cody, I want you to keep close.”

Jack jogged back from wherever he had disappeared to when Charlie wasn't paying attention. “There's an elevator over there, on the other side of that wall.”

They climbed in, the elevator spitting them out at a bathysphere dock.

Silas kicked on Charlie's radio. “Last call for redefining your loyalties. Charlie, please, join the winning team. For your boys' sake.”

“I’m not going to do that, Silas.”

“Oh well. I guess you will get what's coming to you then.”

“He's probably taken up Fountaine’s old haunts. The old bat’s favorite private library is up ahead.”

With some light hacking work from Cody, they managed to open some hidden doors that led to the private library.

“Good boys, you found it. Find a Big Daddy and search his body. I would suggest you find a dead one.”

“No duh.” Jack rolled his eyes.

“Look! There’s one!” Cody pointed to a dead Big Daddy. It was stuck in a glass block wall, glass littering the floor and carpet.

Jack pulled a control system off the body.

“You see the suit control system? That’s step one of turning Charlie here into a disgusting Big Daddy. The only way through that door is to have a Little One open it for you. And they will only trust you if Charlie looks like, sounds like, and even smells like one of those big stinking brutes.”

“Dad! There’s a staircase over here!” Cody yelled. Charlie and Jack followed him up the stairs.

“Where should we go first?” Cody said, waving towards the four doors upstairs. “There’s a school, an armory, a library-”

“Library first.” Charlie replied, injecting himself within Eve before he forgot.

“Aw, I kinda wanted to check out the school first.”

“We can double back.” Charlie reminded him.

They explored the library, Charlie finding a truly concerning amount of ammo hidden among the books. He also found a pair of boots belonging to a Big Daddy suit. They smelled horrible, but Charlie still slipped them over his shoes. He also found a tonic among some lab equipment.

To Cody’s chagrin, the next stop was Failsafe Armored Escorts. The three of them piled into the monitor room, a sterilizing spray making them all cough and hack. Eventually, the red light turned green, and they were able to cross into the engineering labs.

Charlie found the main lab in no time. Jack helped him get into the suit, taking his pack. Cody took the medic bag.

“You will need pheromones and a voice box.” Dr. Tennenbaum oh so helpfully informed them.

“Oh great, more fetch quests.” Jack grumbled.

The third area they entered appeared to be a chemist's lab.

The lab was crawling with splicers, so much so that Jack and Cody had to retreat out into the corridors before they got even a foot into the lab.

Charlie went in alone.

His machine gun tore through splicers. He used vial after vial of eve, finding more in desk drawers and filing cabinets. He broke into the first of many testing chambers, finding not the pheromones but an oddly placed Circus of Values.

He bought out everything he could, stuffing his pockets.

He went back to a main area he was too distracted by splicers to properly visit before. It was a big tube of yellow glowing liquid surrounded by drawers and desks. Looking at it sent a shiver down his spine. He heard a loud banging noise in the distance, and it unnerved him enough that he decided to leave before he found out. He was stopped by the monitor room, but met Cody and Jack outside.

The next place was Optimized Eugenics, a place within a name that did not inspire great hope and optimism with what Charlie would find there.

Dr. Tennenbaum’s voice popped up over the intercom. “Here is where you will be finding the voicebox to sound like one of those repulsive creatures. Do be quick, Charlie.”

The three of them yet again piled into a monitor room, thus time prepared for the sterile sprays.

This time, the doors opened into a whole hallway of yellow tubes, but Charlie ignored them in favor of the laboratory overlooking them.

He found a machine installed onto the wall, a mouthpiece loaded with a tiny device. It looked to be pronged, tiny points and wires covering the otherwise smooth surface. Charlie hesitated.

“Charlie, don't say you are going to back out now. You've come so far. Think of your children. I won't lie and say this part will be painless, but don't you want to rescue the children?”

Charlie looked at the device again. He couldn't leave a single child behind in this hell.

He stepped forward, and bit down on the device.

He gagged as he felt something crawl along the roof of his mouth and slide down his throat. Something cold brushed the back of his throat, and before he could be alarmed, he felt dozens of pinpricks in his mouth and throat and down his esophagus, as if something was taking hold there. The feeling intensified as he felt something thin and metallic burrow into the flesh of his vocal cords. He reached up and rubbed his neck, but it did nothing for the pain in his throat.

Before he could consider more drastic measures, the machine powered down.

He pushed away from it with shaking hands, massaging his throat, his eyes darting around the room.

“Look at you! We will make Big Daddy out of you yet. I think. There is only one piece missing: the pheromones. Go to the Little Wonders Educational Facility.”

Charlie opened his mouth to answer her, but instead doubled over and vomited into the corner, his sick tinted a blackish red. He panicked, gasping for breath as he confronted the idea that he might not be able to get out of the laboratory alive. He shoved down his anxiety, knowing it won't help him survive.

He had to focus on survival.

He had to focus on getting back to the children waiting on him outside.

He wiped his mouth and mustache, hoping the blood wouldn't stain.

It was ironic, considering that what clothes that weren't covered by his waders were stiff with blood and sweat.

Despite his protests, Cody and Jack followed him into the facility. Fortunately for Charlie’s sanity, lab access was only temporary, and he needed someone to keep a lookout for when he returned. Jack and Cody agreed that it was best if they stayed together.

Charlie explored the labyrinth of monitor banks, filing cabinets, and desks of the facility. He wasn’t sure of what he was looking for, but assumed he would know when he saw it. Or Dr.Tennenbaum would yell at him for not knowing some random petri dish was the one he needed.

His heart sank as he opened the first of a hallway of heavily fortified blast doors to find a little girl’s bedroom.

No.

It wasn’t for a little girl.

It was for a Little Sister.

He searched through each room, finding half a dozen identical bedrooms, a pavlov experiment, and a medical room complete with stained operating tables and cruel machinery.

He found the serum in a back office of a back office, and by the smell, it was definitely potent. With a blow to his ego, he sprayed it on.

It was a shock, the next time a splicer passed him without so much as glance his way.

He returned to the boys.

With Tennenbaum’s urging, he called the Little Sisters with a smack of his wrench against the Little Sister tunnel in the main library.

He forced the boys to hide in the library as the first Little Sister poked her head out of the tunnel. She unlocked the door for Charlie, going ahead of him. Charlie opened one last blast door between him and Silas.

The Little Sister led him to Silas, opening doors for him and babbling on in that strange way little kids do.

Charlie got a rude awakening however, as he watched the same Little Sister puncture a splicer he had killed along the way over and over again with the needle embedded into her arm.

He couldn’t stomp and gawk, not while there were splicers gathering just out of range, summoning the courage to attempt to take HIS Little Sister from him.

He would rip them apart before they got the chance.

And rip them apart he did.

Blood soaked his suit by the time HIS Little Sister was done harvesting her angel.

Of course, there were always more angels.

He never complained when HIS Little Sister stopped to harvest an angel. It was her duty, as much as his was to protect her. Not when he could hear the howls of splicers ringing in his ears, not when he was swarmed, not when his armor was beaten, slashed, or shot at.

It’s not like he could feel it, with a Little Sister to protect.

His Little Sister finished harvesting the last angel in that section of the hallway, and brought him back to the central atrium. He locked eyes with another Big daddy, one without a perfect Little Sister like his own. He didn’t feel pity. To be without a Little sister meant to have failed their one true purpose.

Protect their Little Sister.

His Little Sister opened the door to the next section, this one much better decorated than the last. He was pleased, as the more decorated an area, the safer it was for his Little Sister.

He followed her through the halls, wading through flooded corridors and broken walls without blinking.

He hacked the surrounding turrets, cameras and security drones with ease as his Little Sister chose an angel to harvest.

This time, something bigger than a soon to be angel interrupted his Little Sister’s harvest.

A lone bouncer.

One that was determined to steal HIS Little Sister.

The fight ended with him on top, a little worse for wear, but his Little Sister was unharmed, and that was all that mattered.

He and his Little Sister walked through the next door, his Little Sister trusting him with her needle to help him take down Silas.

He stepped into the elevator, his connection to his Little Sister waning with every inch of space lost between them. Charlie started to return to his senses, feeling uncomfortable with the blood seeping into his skin.

“Know that I am going to win this little game of ours Charlie. It’s all about power, you might have gained a fancy suit and a little friend -” Silas stepped out behind a giant flaming, Eve fueled machine in the middle of the room, kicking a corpse with glowing blue veins aside as he gloated. “I am the perfect blend of man, and living machine.”

“Breakdown?” Jack yelled. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

“A brilliant man such as myself never dies.” He screamed.

“Get him dad!” Cody yelled.

Silas was naked inside the dead Cybertronian, his lower torso and legs disappearing into the wires and tubes and organs of Breakdown’s chest. He was sickly, his eyes glowing yellow, what tubing that could be seen of Breakdown’s glowed faintly green.

Silas roared, charging at Charlie.

Charlie opened fire, firing round after round of machine gun fire into the cracked armor of Breakdown’s plating.

The Little Sisters frenzied, piling onto the glowing corpse and stabbing it with their needles.

Cody and Jack took cover in a hidden catwalk lining the walls, throwing Charlie boxes of ammo from the sidelines.

Charlie rushed to pick them up, reloading and aiming for the weak points of Silas's dead armor.

Without warning, the entirety of Silas’s left arm fell off, revealing the mangled and burned remnants of his human limb.

Charlie turned it to a bloody smear against Silas’s blue armor, Silas screaming in pain.

Silas swung wildly, Charlie barely dodging.

Cody and Jack lobbed grenades at the monster, Cody cheering him and the Little Sisters on.

One of Charlie's proximity bombs struck home, turning Silas’s back into a column of blue fire.

Cody whooped and cheered, he and Jack hugging and laughing as Silas desperately tried to extinguish the flames while staying on his feet.

They hit the ground as they heard the rat at tat tat of machine gun fire.

Silas roared, stomping his feet. “You fuckers! I am king! I am everything!”

Cody got back up, lobbing another bomb into the fray.

“Brother! Brother!” The Little Sisters cried, attacking any splicers that got close to the boys.

Without warning, the flaming device exploded, tearing Silas to shreds and knocking Charlie unconscious.

Charlie woke up to Cody and several of the Little Sisters huddled around him, Jack out of sight.

“Don't leave me!” Rapture sobbed, feedback ringing in Charlie's ears. “Charlie please, please don't leave, you can stay forever, please, the plasmids, the plasmids are the key. Please, you could take Mr. Ryan's place, live happily ever after with me and Lady El and my Little Sisters and Big Brothers and Big Daddies. Please, don't gooooo!”

“I'm sorry Rapture, but I have a family up top. I promise, I will get you help and some new friends. But, I need to reach the surface first.”

“Ok. But you have to keep your promise. I opened up the bathysphere. Be careful, ok?”

“We will.” Charlie reassured him. A door opened to their left.

The Little Sisters followed them, abandoning their needles with Silas's corpse.

“Empty your bags of ammo and weapons. We are going to leave them in a pile in the metro except for my gun. If we are lucky, there will be people waiting. If not, me and Cody took a kayak, and we can go to the docks and call the Coast Guard from there. Jack, help me out of this suit.”

Jack helped him out, Charlie groaning as the weight of the suit was finally off his shoulders. He unloaded all the weapons, setting everything aside except his service issued pistol.

Jack, Cody, Charlie, and the Little Sisters entered the bathysphere, their destination preselected.

They were silent as they made it to the lighthouse, the Little Sisters quiet.

As soon as Charlie stepped out of the bathysphere, his cell phone rang.

“There's been a few deaths, Fowler. Breakdown and Shockwave are deceased, and efforts to find missing persons Danielle Burns and Graham Burns have led to us finding Jack and June Darby-”

“And Arcee. They are waiting. Once High Tide arrives, you five will be ground bridged to our base and taken in for medical treatment. A Cityspeaker has been contacted to handle Rapture. I finally managed to get it through Prime’s thick skull that we don't leave people for dead out here, and he better bet his flame patterned behind that we are mobilizing a full search of Rapture once Windblade gives the go ahead.”

Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. “One other thing. Most of Rapture’s population are addicts. Violent ones. Among them are children, dozens of them, who have been experimented on and aggressively controlled their whole lives. They are under the influence of serious delusions, and may not react properly to attempts to help them. I have about a half dozen of them with me.”

“I see. You will be debriefed anyway, I would like your opinion on any sort of plan used in the search.”

The familiar form of High Tide pulled up to the dock. “Hey guys.” His voice sounded hoarse, dents, scratches, and missing paint littering his body. “Get in.”

Cody scrambled aboard, he and Jack racing for the Captain's seat. The Little Sisters started up a game of tag on the cabin. Charlie laid down on a padded bench, fighting to keep his eyes open.

High Tide noticed. “Chief, you ok?”

“I'm just exhausted. I'm an old man, High Tide. I don't quite bounce back the same way the kids do.”

“Yeah, I feel yah. The other old man is waiting to take you three back to base for check ups before you go home.”

“Good. Kids have been through enough.”

“You don't look to be in great shape either.”

“I’ll deal.”

They docked, a swarm of NEST agents, ambulances, various Autobots, and of course, Huxley Prescott, waiting for them to disembark.

Cody wandered away from everyone immediately, overwhelmed by the noise and crowd. He pulled Shockwave’s camera and the audio diaries out of his bag and went up to a soldier standing off to the side. “I just - I don't want to touch it anymore. There's bad stuff on there.” He said, handing them to her, who handed it off to an agent.

“Cody, come here!” Charlie yelled.

Cody turned and ran back to his dad, hugging him from behind. “I’m sorry! You said to stay close, but I was looking in my bag for Ellie and the camera was on top and I panicked and -”

“It's ok, I have someone I want you to meet.” Cody squeaked as his dad picked him up and sat him down on the floor of a white and orange ambulance.

“Cody, isn't it? I'm Ratchet. Charlie said something about being exposed to something that looked like energon?” A little mechanical arm popped out of a panel near the door. “Take a deep breath for me.” a green light passed over Cody. “That's odd. He does read like he's had skin exposure to energon. Cody, I want you to sit on the bench. Charlie, lay down on the gurney for Primus sake. You're swaying on your feet and both your wrists are minced meat. Jack, up front.”

Charlie groaned as he laid back, putting his bag within reach. “There's samples of the crap that made it that way in there.”

Ratchet swore. “Really? A detox too. You humans are a pain. Let me see. Ah, yeah, dirty needles. How quaint. Guess who earned blood work AND tetanus vaccines. The kids get away easy, but you? Well, I hope June can get a good stick, because you certainly did. How many vials of this stuff did you take? You know what, text me the number. I need bragging rights for the wall of dumb shit my coworkers get into.”

Charlie smiled. “So I guess I’m not gonna die?”

“Pfft, that remains to be seen. Tetanus shots are supposed to feel like dying.” Ratchet hit his siren, and they drove through a ground bridge and onto a military base. “We got two for energon exposure and one for energon contamination. The kids were exposed, but I want all three of them under observation until labs come back.”

A few nurses came out of nowhere, strapping Charlie to a gurney and herding the boys away.

He was rolled into a patient room, and left to change.

A nurse came back in when he was ready. However, he was surprised when Ratchet's holoform followed them.

“Welp, consider me concerned.” Ratchet said, pulling a cart behind him with all kinds of equipment, testing kits, and sterile wrapped trays.

“Cody and Jack tested clean, with no abnormal amounts of energon detected in the bloodstream, considering that they both live with Cybertronians. However, you had open sites, so this is going to take a bit. I’m doing all of it, since it's energon we are looking for, but I suggest you lay down, and listen to something on your phone.”

Charlie threw on something he was listening to before he went down to Rapture, however long ago that now felt.

Ratchet got to work.

Charlie was discharged a week later, Graham and the other rescue bots being traded back to the Autobots from the Decepticons the second day into his stay. Graham’s room was down the hall, and Graham sat by him whenever he could.

His middle son walked with a cane and leg braces now, his body one big bruise from rough treatment by the decepticons. But he and the bots were alive, and he could try and handle the rest when it cropped up.

It didn't take long for the island to mostly settle back into its usual way of life.

Predictably, both Huxley and Fowler had to swing by the firehouse at a mildly inconvenient moment.

Fowler found Charlie talking to Huxley.
“Charlie, the docs wanted you to book a follow up.”

“Bill, I’m fine.”

“Charlie, you're fifty eight and have a young son. I think you should schedule a follow-up.”

“Are you ok, Charlie? Who's this?”

“An old friend, Huxley. And he has a point. As much as I loathe to say it, there's a reason behind the nagging. I don't think they would find anything, but on the other hand, I did spend four days down in a sick city sized bot.”

“Rapture is sick? How interesting.”

“Huxley, may I remind you that Rapture is still a minor in the eyes of our big friends. Disclosing details risks opening up an already vulnerable kid to worse treatment.”

“Oh. Well, scratch that, a triumphant update on our family of heros should be good for now. Charlie, I have to say on behalf of all of Griffin Rock, I hope Dani is found safe.”

Several days passed as Windblade, the only known cityspeaker to the Autobots, started working with the young titan, Rapture, chatting eagerly with the bot. He wasn't overly excited about letting NEST agents and minibot medics into his streets, but eventually, they were allowed in.

Ratchet had Charlie come for daily follow ups, a treatment being devised after a couple days.

Charlie wasn't surprised he fell asleep at his latest appointment.

Whatever concoction that Ratchet had come up with for the plasmid treatment made him dizzy and out of it, and with a silenced heart monitor hooked up to his chest meant he didn't have to worry about being woken up until the treatment was over.

Meanwhile, Ratchet was quiet. “I've never seen anything like this. It's not behaving like any sort of substance I know of. The treatments seem to work, staving off withdrawal and keeping him stable. But, there's a behavioral side to this. We don't nearly have any information on how habit forming this stuff is outside of a life or death situation. I think we should get Kade involved. I know he won't like it, but I don't like relying on him to self-report if things go south.”

“Shit. That bad?” Fowler asked, watching the older man sleep.

“Remember the synth-en incident? Same difference here.”

“Oh. Yeah, I should call Kade, have him keep an eye out. Poor Chase is missing his patrol partner, but honestly, I think it's about time he retires. I'm honestly thinking about it too.”

“Hmm. I think I might have a few options. I have to go over them with him once he wakes up.”

“The doc is talking about putting in a central line for treatments.” Charlie sat on the couch, turning the news over and over in his head as he faced his oldest son.

“Shit. I - I don't know what to think.”

“Me neither.” Charlie admitted, rubbing his nose. He really was trying not to cry. Cody would be home soon, and he at least had to pretend to have his shit together for a little while longer.

“Fowler told me that I should keep an eye on you. Didn't go into too much detail, just said that there's some symptoms that could be overlooked, memory problems and shaky hands, that sort of stuff.”

“Honestly, I feel like that's warranted.”

Kade nearly spit out his coffee. “Dad! You're not supposed to-”

“I'm pushing sixty, son. I'm due to start slowing down sooner than later. Maybe I should think about hiring someone to run patrols, get Fowler onto it. With the treatments, and Dani being missing, I mean, we aren't hurting for money, but with me taking unpaid leave, we are short a part of our shared income.”

“Desk work? You hate that stuff.”

“No, you hate it.”

Kade thought about it, and agreed.

Graham ran into the room, very out of breath. “They found Dani. A submarine is going to the rescue team's location to evacuate her and the woman who kept her hostage. Windblade said she's physically fine, but disoriented. They are taking her right to medical. They said two visitors, no kids, so I guess me and Kade would have to play rock paper scissors on this one.”

“Both of you go.”

Graham looked at him in shock.

“Graham, I’m exhausted. I’ll call Ezra, ask if he could make dinner or order something for me and Cody. Ratchet would have my head if I didn't have another adult in the house watching out for both of us overnight, so later I’ll ask Anne if she doesn't mind me and Cody crashing in the guest room or the pullout couch in the office.”

“Dad, are you ok?” Graham asked.

“The doc says I’m getting better. I'm on some experimental stuff, I just got back from a treatment a little while ago. How are you doing? Has the bruising gone down?”

Graham winced. “My nose has been fixed, but the one on my stomach is a particularly nasty shade of yellow.”

“Yellow - Graham, I’m out of the loop here. What did those sick bots do?”

Graham refused to meet Kade’s eyes. “They hit me with a dead stun baton.”

Kade saw red. “What?”

“One of the bot prisoners had a nightmare, I tried to quiet him before the guards noticed, they knocked me out of the way before using the baton on him to - I think you know.”

“They didn't give us much food, but they were near fanatical about giving us enough water. Apparently someone died of dehydration, and that spooked the foot soldiers enough to not be stingy. One day, or night or whatever time it was, the bot prisoners were taken, scanned by a drone, and brought back with their injuries treated. Then -” Graham closed his eyes, pinching himself and snapping a rubber band on his wrist a couple of times before looking up. “They picked us up one by one and put us in plexiglass tubes. We were loaded up in a trailer and the next thing I remember, I was drinking a cup of coffee in a to-go cup while Ms. Darby chatted over my head.”

“Oh. Graham, I'm -”

“Can it, I am sick of pity. I'm going back to bed. Kade, if you want to see Dani, figure it out yourself.”

Charlie frowned. “Graham, that's not necessary. I don't like your tone. Are you sure that you are alright?”

Graham rolled his eyes.

“Hey. You're too old for that. Show a little respect.”

“Yes dad. I'm sorry Kade. I'm going to bed.”

The next day, Charlie got a call. “Is it good news, Bill?”

“No. There's a slug thing in your daughter’s body, they got it out last night, but there's complications. She's like the other so-called Little Sisters, with very little memory, but, other than that, she's awake, and is being transferred to a better facility soon. A really nice private hospital, the big guy is footing the bill. I wish I could tell you more. How's the treatment going?”

“Fine. Little tired from it all. Worried about the kids, mostly.”

“Feel better, okay? Take care of yourself. I will call you if I have any more information. I will text you the hospital details.”

Charlie hung up on him, the urge to itch his injection scars cramping up his hands. He shouldn't, if he touches them he risks them being permanent, but the sting was tempting.

Dr. Tennenbaum was caught by NEST forces by the end of the week.

She insisted on gloating.

“The best part is, you will never know how many. I don't truly know how many. I have been assisting monsters since I was sixteen years old with a shaved head trapped in a death camp. But sure, go find the piles of bones and dresses, try and count them. I'm curious why you see a point.”

“Because they are people.” Charlie said, bewildered by the lack of care Dr. Tennenbaum had for other human beings.

Tennenbaum laughed. “People? After I have gotten to them? No, they become addicts, abominations. Don't tell me jokes like that, you’ll make me laugh.” She showed him the uneven numbers tattooed on her arm, tracing the raised scars where the tattoo gun had carved into her arm. “Have you informed our big friends of our sins?”

Agent Fowler cleared his throat. “Of course, they showed us so much of their history-”

“Quiet, boy.” Tennenbaum hissed. “Nobody likes it when you talk.”

“Hey.” Charlie growled. “Enough. Have some respect.”

“Well, Charlie, you've certainly switched sides. Found an ally in the topsiders, I see. Isn't that special of you.” She stared down Fowler.

“I think I'd like to confess now. Not to you two, but one of your big scary soldiers. Stir up their egos a bit.”

One more word out of this woman, and Charlie was going to lose it. He turned around and left the interrogation room, waving away Agent Fowler. “I’m fine, Bill. She just got to me, and with my kids not doing well…”

“You should visit her.”

“Dani?”

“Yeah. The place the big guy put her in is really nice.”

“I … I think I will. Thank you, Bill.”

“For what it's worth, I hope things get better for you, Charlie.”

The next day, Charlie took a flight downstate to the tiny fancy private hospital that Optimus had paid for Dani to be transferred to.

He checked in and got his visitor pass, and found Dani’s room.

Dani beamed when she saw him.

“Mr. B! There's a lot of scary people who have been coming in and out of my room. One of them gave me my Elle back, so I guess he is ok. Do you know them, Mr. B?” Dani was sitting on the bed, holding the old toy elephant and ignoring the meal tray in front of her.

“Yes, they are doctors and nurses Dani. They are here to help.”

Dani frowned. “Oh. I guess I shouldn't have made such a fuss then. Do you know when Dr. Tennenbaum will be coming by? She hasn't called yet. She told me she would.”

Charlie sat on the edge of Dani’s bed. “Dr. Tennenbaum doesn't have a phone right now. How are you? Are you feeling ok?”

“Uh huh. I'm good. They gave me a remote for the TV over there, but the buttons are weird.” She showed him the remote, a tamper proof case over all the buttons except the volume, channel, power, and the arrow pad. At one point, someone had bit into the hard plastic.

“Dani, what do you want to watch?”

“Nothing. Could we play a game? There's a deck of cards in the nightstand.”

“Of course, but, if I win, you have to eat your lunch.”

“Alright, Mr. B. Let's play uno. Nurse Kelly taught me uno when I came here and couldn't sleep.”

Charlie took a deep breath, and shuffled the cards. “You know Dani, I’m not just Mr. B. I'm your dad.” He gave Dani her cards.

Dani looked up from her cards. “Oh. I think I had a dad. And a mom, but she's long gone to heaven. Wait, if you’re my dad, then what about the other Mr. Bubbles? Are they the other Little Sisters’ daddies?” She put down the first card.

“I don't know. But, I think that you might have more than just me as your family. Could you think super hard about that?” Charlie put down a skip and then a second card.

“Hmm. Well, there's the Little Sisters, and the Little Brother that I met right after he met Rapture and started The Process, but I don't remember much else. I was really sick before Dr. Tennenbaum helped me, and she said that she found me with Elle in rough shape." She made Charlie draw four. “The color is green now.”

“Let's not talk about Tennenbaum, and instead just play cards.” Charlie returned the favor with a plus two.

“Ok Dad. They keep making me see this mind doctor all the time. He asks me really tough questions, but he says that if I do a good job and keep remembering things, I can go home. Though I don't remember what home is yet, he’s shown me pictures but I don't remember the building at all.” She picked up the extra cards and played her turn.

“The mind doctor is called a psychiatrist.” Charlie put his own card down.

“Ugh, too many syllables, I am just going to keep calling him the mind doctor. I can't pronounce his name either, there's all kinds of extra letters and hidden sounds. We are working on it though.” She put down her card. “Uno.”

Charlie smiled. “Not for long, kiddo.” He pulled out another draw four. “New color is red.”

“Boo. I fold.” She shoved her cards back into the box.

“Well, since I won, you have to eat lunch.”

Dani smiled. “Alright. Then, I have to ask you a question.”

“Oh? What's your question?”

“What other family do I have? Besides you and the Little Brother and Little Sisters?” she dug into the salad that made up most of her lunch.

“You have two little brothers, Graham and Cody, and one big brother, Kade, and an uncle, Woodrow.”

Dani wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Huh. I think I remember a big flying thing. A heli- something. I don't know, I have some weird gaps in my memory.”

Charlie took her hand and squeezed it lightly. “That's ok, I can fill you in.” He took a risk, and tried to take a little of her Adam, cupping her face in his hands.

She leaned into his touch, looking better just with a little Adam removed.

He kissed her cheek before saying his' I love yous’ and leaving for the night. He had booked his hotel for the week, and the next day, he would be able to take her on an outing. He would have to get rid of her supply of Adam there.

But either way, he got his kids back.

Everything might just turn out okay in the end.

Right?