The Sea of Dreams

[General Goose]

Well, I had to do a short introduction to a story for an English lesson assignment, and as I had no idea what to base it on, I decided to use BioShock as an inspiration. I've already handed it in, and it's nowhere near as good as some of the other, proper, fanfiction I've seen elsewhere, but was wondering what you guys thought of it (no explicit references to BioShock or Rapture, mind, didn't wanna be called out on that. The second chapter does directly reference it though, as I wrote that for fun):

 

The corridor was cluttered with litter and the occasional mutilated corpse. The decaying body of a police officer, dressed in full waterproofs, lay against a smashed bench, while the bloody body of a female factory worker, lying in the foetal position, lay nearby, in the middle of a puddle of cloudy sea-water.

The glass walls were not in a great state either; small cracks and tiny holes allowed streams of sea water to seep in, culminating in several shallow murky puddles on the corridor floor. The fish outside, unaffected by the city and its debris for the most part, swam on by, ignoring the dead body floating alongside them and the flickering neon lights besides them.

A ravaged, injured man entered the corridor. He had an old dilapidated lead pipe in one hand, while his other scarred hand was holding an old cigarette and twitching erratically. Pausing only to cough and splutter, he proceeded to limp doggedly down the underwater corridor. He stepped on the factory worker’s corpse, however, he was too caught up in his own thoughts and insanities to care where his feet were taking him. Rubbing his temple with his cigarette-holding hand, he muttered an unintelligible rant under his breath before putting the cigarette back in his mouth. Taking a puff and exhaling, he paused briefly to stare through the wall at the decaying utopia. Rotting skyscrapers covered in coral, litter floating aimlessly through the sea and neon lights struggling to stay illuminated.

Sighing, he continued on his way, taking another laboured puff. He hated these cigarettes with a passion. They used to be tolerable, but they’d steadily gotten worse with time as the condition of the city itself decreased thanks to war and decay. His wife always use to say that’s another reason to quit smoking, but she was always high on other even more unhealthy drugs, so she couldn’t talk, the bloody hypocrite.

And she was dead, he couldn’t forget that. Found her lying on a crate with a bullet in her eye, scorch-marks all over her scarred skin and blood splattered everywhere. That prevented her from talking as well.

Anyway, the cigarettes.

The quality was vastly inferior to the ones the rich snobs and business tycoons enjoyed, and even by tobacco standards, they played havoc with his old lungs. But these artificial fags were the only ones he could afford, particularly in the current economic climate and the fall of the city. Still, at the end of the day, he couldn’t really complain. Wouldn’t help matters. No one ever built a successful life out of complaining, he always said, except for journalists.

He had reached the other end of the corridor by now, and he threw his cigarette on the floor and crushed it underneath his boot, smearing the ash on the floor. The watertight security door slid open to let him in, and he entered the dilapidated pub. Since the city’s downfall, the pub was no longer the pillar of the community it once was. Today, it was a bloodied, looted mess. Newspapers and scraps of paper were sprawled on tables, beer bottles were smashed on the rotten wooden floor and the jukebox looped the same song over and over. Until some clever sod had hit it with a crowbar. Now it just loops the same word over and over again instead. Nobody thought that was a great improvement.

Aside from his own wheezy coughing, pained footsteps and the repeated looping of “maybe”, the only sounds were the other survivors of the city in the distance muttering or fighting each other (gunshots and screams of pain and horror were not uncommon), and the occasional advertisement or propaganda line from the city PA system.

A spider scuttled along the floor, acting like it had better places to be than here watching the city kill itself. Now, the man wasn’t an arachnophobe, but he felt like taking his anger out on something, and the spider was a prime candidate who conveniently had a reputation of being helpless and useless and not putting up much of a fight. So he swung the lead pipe at the arachnid, who continued his walk oblivious. Angered by this arrogance, he took aim again, once again failing to hit the creature. Sweating and muttering curses under his breath, he swung even harder. This time, he hit his own foot.

Dropping the pipe and swearing incessantly, he grabbed at a table for support, massaging his old foot in a vain attempt to make the pain subside. Blocking out the grating sounds and smells of the city, eventually the pain went. He picked up the pipe and went on his way to the counter, unknowingly stepping on the troublesome spider as he did so. Pulling a dusty bottle of cheap, tacky beer from the shelves and leaving a tacky, rolled-up note on the counter (where most of his payments remained uncollected) he shuffled to a darkened corridor, pulled off the lid and downed the bottle in a few quick gulps. He stared out of the window, looking over the city on the seabed.

Corpses, old junk and the occasional bit of rubble floated through the deep blue waters, or just lay dormant on the seabed. The fish as always just ignored it. They had bigger things to think about probably. An occasional fish would get strangled by a discarded shopping bag or fishing net, or get choked by the occasional stray source of city pollution that was still polluting, despite it being redundant. Every now and then, a massive whale or squid would swim past, them viewing the dystopia as little more than rocks that need to be dodged.

Placing the empty bottle on the table nearby, he began to walk home, kicking an old crate filled with hypodermic needles out of the way. He sighed and began to mutter more incoherent, irrelevant rubbish.

As he walked through the corridor, he took out another cigarette and as he was lighting it, he stepped on the factory worker’s squishy corpse again. This time, she grabbed his foot, causing him to stumble and drop the lit cigarette.

He tried to kick free, screaming and throwing outlandish threats at her as he did so, but she pulled herself up and withdrew a bloodied, grimy meathook from her pocket.

This mad woman had obviously played dead in an attempt to draw her prey into an evil trap, and it worked. While the last, lingering threads of her humanity tried to stop her from killing the man, now firmly at her mercy, she still plunged the hook straight into his chest.

Pulling it out after twisting it around a bit, a large stream of blood burst from his chest. He begged for mercy and redemption for his sins. Her cruel face began distorting even further as she burst into sadistic laughter, this former mother, previously a sane, kind member of the community, had been driven by circumstance into a complete monster, like almost everyone else still alive in the city, forced to scavenging and murder for survival and entertainment.

She stabbed his chest a few more times, and as he gurgled and bled, his face eventually turned a sickly grey colour and his struggling and desperate screaming stopped. Satisfied, she let go. She wiped the blood of the hook with a cloth, and turned to stare at the ugly corpse of the policeman.

He was now standing upright, dusting himself down, readjusting his cap and looking around. After letting out a quiet yet crazed cackle, he muttered “I get to kill the next one, alright?”

“Yes, sure” came the reply from his companion. The policeman went to assume the ambush position in the muddy water, yet she stopped him.

“We won’t be getting another one here for quite a while. Damn freaks seem to be catching onto us” she explained.

Pausing to think, the policeman suggested “What about we hang around at the old market? Heavy traffic, plenty of hiding spots…”

“Yep. Sounds great.” They turned around and headed away from the pub, leaving the corpse of their victim lying in a pool of his own sickly blood.

 

[General Goose]

 

The policeman adjusted his peaked cap yet again for what felt like the billionth time. His companion was still attacking the overturned Circus of Values machine, determined to get what she wanted out of it.

 

"Work, you piece of overpriced sh*te!" she yelled, kicking it yet again, only to provoke yet another cheesy advertising jingle. Her eyes bulged maniacally and she once again tried sticking her gangly arm into the machine to retrieve her supplies. She pulled out a can of fish. Chucking it outside, she stuck her arm in again, rifling through the innards of the machine in deep concentration.

 

The policeman, having thoroughly made sure his cap was adjusted to his requirements, resumed keeping an eye out for potential threats. He saw one of those lumbering Big Daddies escorting a Little Sister; an increasingly rare commodity in modern Rapture. However, despite his current need for ADAM, he did not attack; not out of moral concern, oh no, having moral concern was a death trap in modern Rapture. He just didn't feel like he stood a chance against a Big Daddy when Mary had her arm stuck deep inside a vending machine.

 

Gripping the cold machine gun barrel tightly to ease his paranoia, Andrew tried humming a little tune. Cole Porter song. His rhythm was interrupted by Mary's repeated grunts and swears, the Little Sister's constant tuneless singing and the occasional scream in the background.

 

"Erm…Andrew? My arm's kinda stuck here…"

 

"Again? Listen, would it kill you to actually pay at a vending machine for once in your sordid little life?" Exasperated, he walked over, and using a crowbar, managed to wedge Mary's arm out. She screamed a lot and lost a small amount of blood and two fingernails, but her arm got out.

 

While they were both distracted, the oblivious little child and her lumbering protector happened to stroll right past the vending machine; close enough to deem Mary and Andrew a threat as Andrew struggled to get Mary free. Mary's screams drowned out the Big Daddy's warnings, and when Andrew finally got her free and got back to his feet; he was greeted by a sharp punch courtesy of a rivet gun, the Big Daddy having decided they were a threat for too long.

 

Andrew flew across the market; landing in a pile of boxes filled with stale food and contraband, and immediately went out cold, his waterproofs covered in Arcadia Merlot and distilled water, from a few bottles in the open top crates. Mary, still in shock from the damage to her arm, barely had time to consider the fate that had befallen her ally before she too received a punch to the face.

 

Luckily for her, she had landed in a patch of soft mud. Scrambling around her for a weapon, she quickly picked up a small pistol, with cult markings scrawled across it in green ink. Great, she thought, a small pistol against a rivet gun-wielding tin behemoth. Oh, my chances of survival are great.

 

However, the low chances of survival she got from using the pistol were preferable to the nonexistent survival rates she had from just letting the Big Daddy rivet gun her to death. As such, she took aim, trying to shoot wherever she thought there may be a weak spot. Head, gas tank, crotch. The bullets had an affect, but he seemed unstoppable, as he began firing rivets back at her. Luckily, the first rivet managed to hit the wall behind her, desecrating a Sinclair Solutions advertisement. The chamber emptied, and as she reached into her pockets, she remembered.

 

"Damn. No ammo. Right." She stopped the defeatist pondering there, as a rivet had just impaled her right leg. Yelling in pain, she cowered in fear. The Big Daddy was approaching, with the Little Sister yelling encouragement so deluded she obviously thought it was a game of paintball. She prayed to God, despite being an atheist, and began pondering on her regrets and successes over her life, preparing for the incoming darkness. She closed her eyes.

 

"Mr. Bubbles?"

 

"Mr. Bubbles?"

 

"Mr. Bubbles? You're really cold, Mr. B. Did you stick your hand in the fridge again by accident? Silly Mr. B."

 

"Mr. B? You can stop playing now."

 

"MISTER B!"

 

Mary opened her eyes, slowly. There stood the Big Daddy, frozen in ice, its finger frozen on the trigger of the rivet gun, the rivet gun pointed squarely at her face. The Little Sister was clutching to the top, terrified and freezing. Behind him, stood a young Splicer, couldn't be more then 16 years old. His face was spotty and scarred, but aside from a small tumour behind his ears, looked relatively good for Splicer standards. His clothes were dirty, torn and quickly becoming too small. He was currently "admiring" his art.

 

"Pretty good, don't you think?"

 

 

 

"Who…who…who the f*ck are you?" Mary, in a state of shock and paranoia, scrambled to her feet, using a nearby chair as support for her wounded leg. She aimed her gun, forgetting that it was devoid of ammunition, at the teenager. He chuckled, walked forward, brushed the gun aside and shook her hand, grinning like an ugly politician as he did so.

 

"Name's Ted McInnis. Survivor, much like yourself", he said, awkwardly yet like he'd rehearsed the lines before. He brushed a speck of dirt of his school blazer, and continued "Now, I think if you and your acquaintance" he pointed to Andrew, who was still lying concussed underneath a pile of crates, "were to join me in a partnership, it would be mutually beneficial for both parties." Judging by his proper way of speaking, Mary worked out he was probably a nerd at school.

 

"Why don't I just shoot you?" Mary said, aiming her gun straight at Ted's eye.

 

"A viable strategy" Ted replied "were it not for the fact that you are out of ammo and my timely interference saved your life. And I could probably kill you like that." He tried, and failed, to click his fingers. "Damn. Never knew how to do that….And…I also happen to have a horde of ADAM stashed away. I may be interested in sharing it if I feel it's in my best interest."

 

Mary stared at the ruined Sinclair Solutions poster. "Can I discuss it with my mate?"

 

"Of course."

 

Mary walked off, leaving the creepy kid to idly stare at an abandoned book on the table and tie his shoelaces back up. She approached Andrew, who was still lying in the middle of the pile of crates. Pulling him up, he began mumbling.

 

"Not now, mummy. I don't wanna get up today…"

 

Mary slapped him, and he finally woke up completely. "Woah, woah, woah! Calm down, you crazy woman! Seriously…"

 

Ignoring his dirty looks and aggravated mutters, Mary pulled him to his feet. "Long version or short version?" she asked him.

 

"Medium version."

 

Mary glared at him, then answered "Basically, after you were knocked out cold, the Big Daddy turned on me. Now, just before he killed me, that weird kid over there froze him and said that he thought he could join us."

 

"Don't you usually kill anyone you don't like the look of?"

 

"Yeah, and I'm planning on doing that, but we're not exactly in a position to fight back. And…he has a stash of ADAM."

 

Andrew licked his lips. He couldn't remember the last time he had a good fix of ADAM. Apparently withdrawal caused SERIOUS insanity and mutations. "Well," Andrew pondered aloud "I say we give the kid a chance. There's safety in numbers…and safety in ADAM."

 

"Good. We're agreed. Let's go along with the prick. Can I kill him though? You know, if the time comes."

 

Andrew sighed. "Fine. But we gotta do something about this bloodlust of yours."

 

 

 

 

"Hey, Andrew! Look at this!" Ajay called to his friend, as he used a crowbar to rip the top of a large mouldy crate off. Inside was a shining pile of EVE and Plasmid hypos. Ajay picked up a few test hypos, and, checking to see none of his colleagues were looking, slyly stuffed them in his pocket.

 

The distinctive whistling of Andrew and the constant blabber of Coswell soon drifted closer to Ajay. "And, you know, I trust the old geezer's opinion, he is a doctor after all, and a bloody damn good one at that, but it's too late to stop the ADAM craze now, for better or for worse. It's the top of the market, Fontaine or no Fontaine. It's candy for kids, aphrodisiac for teens and even better for adults. You still aren't splicing, are ya Andy?"

 

"No, Mr. Coswell, Sir."

 

Andrew Sanderson and Rupert Coswell, the source of the voices and two of the leading figures in the strike against Fontaine's factory, slipped past the police line and entered the storeroom where Ajay was, Andrew nursing a minor gunshot wound to his hand.

 

Mr. Coswell continued, "Ah, good. Man who sticks to his principles. We need more of your type down here." A slight frown briefly flashed across Coswell's face as he said this. "Anyway, must go off. Got to get this whole Fontaine factory searched and all that. Gotta get in contact with Sullivan and Manley, see if they've got the docks and the Fontaine HQ all under control." With that, he walked off, probably to bore someone else with his stories and paperwork.

 

Andrew turned to Ajay, who was scribbling in his conspiracy theory notebook as usual. "So, Ajay, what you got here?"

 

Barely looking up from his notepad, Ajay replied "Well, we found a few industrial materials and sh*t that we think Fontaine took to his factory here to use himself. Other than that and a whole bunch of ADAM paraphernalia, absolutely bugger all." Flipping his notebook shut and chewing the nib of a pen, Ajay looked around to see if no-one was eavesdropping, then whispered "You think the rumours about Ryan nationalising Fontaine's assets now he's out of the picture are true?"

 

"You think I got time to speculate?"

 

"Well, you certainly got time to hang around in the Educational Pavilion and try chatting up that Carnegie lady."

 

Playfully punching Ajay, Andrew muttered "Oh, shut up. I love her. She's perfect, we're a good match."

 

"Well, aside from the fact that YOU are nowhere near perfect?"

 

"Oh shut up, you crazy kook". They both chuckled, and Ajay returned to rifling through the crate.

 

"Lemme guess. More ADAM to 'defend your family' and 'look good naked'" Andrew sarcastically muttered, disapproving of Ajay's thirst for ADAM. Ajay sighed, and pocketed a few EVE hypos.

 

"You need coffee and porn to stay alert, I need ADAM. No difference really, so stop whining."

 

"It's unnatural. Wrong. Unhealthy." Andrew thought the very concept of ADAM was disgusting. He'd seen the physical changes it can cause, and he'd seen the slugs it came from. Both were sickening.

 

Ajay examined a label on an EVE hypo, "Oh, those studies are officially debunked and discredited. You can't trust them, really. They may be right but…hey, I Splice, I'm not any more mutated or insane than I was the day I hopped off the bathysphere into Rapture. Anyway, aside from a little hiccup here and there like Fontaine's smuggling or that Lamb bitch in Pauper's Drop, Rapture's still running smoothly for most people. ADAM hasn't caused the 'end of all Rapturian society as we know it' like you said it would."

 

"Okay, that was an exaggeration, but still."

 

"Anyway…I hear the lovely Nina Carnegie likes a man who does a bit of splicing every now and again." With a smug grin on his face, Ajay picked up an evidence box and a pile of paperwork and left the storeroom, leaving Andrew alone aside from the occasional shout and swear word in the distance.

 

Andrew sighed and rubbed his temple. Ah, temptation.

 

"Ah, one little splice or two can't do much harm." Andrew rifled through the big box of ADAM and EVE hypos, before finding a few tonics and Plasmids that caught his eye as the sort of thing that would impress Nina. With a few hypos and small boxes in his hands, he quickly began stuffing them into the inside pockets of his smelly waterproof coat.

 

"Ah, Andrew!"

 

Andrew jumped, dropping a BrainBoost tonic on the floor.

 

Mr. Coswell entered the storeroom, carrying a big box of brass fixtures. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything Andrew, I'm just helping McDonagh repair this place and get everything in order….wait…did you drop that tonic?" Coswell put the box on an already cluttered workbench, bent down and examined the broken glass and dabbed his finger in the murky liquid. He licked the substance off his finger. "Hmm. BrainBoost. Well, next time you see Ajay, tell him to be more careful if he insists on swiping tonics."

 

"Erm…sure…isn't it against the rules?"

 

Coswell shrugged. "Maybe. But, well…you're probably one of the few officers who play by official rules and moral codes in here. Heavens knows poor Ajay needs some BrainBoost anyway. To be honest…" Mr. Coswell unbuttoned his old coat, quickly revealing a large amount of beef stuffed in the inside pockets to Andrew, before buttoning it back up. "Mrs. Coswell hasn't cooked with real, quality beef in quite a while. It may be contraband, but it's here so, why not put it to good use? Waste is parasitic, after all. Anyway, we all deserve to treat ourselves. We just took down Fontaine's main manufacturing plant. We just helped bring down a psychopathic amoral sleazy crook who threatened the very existence of this fine city. We're heroes in the eyes of Ryan and the common citizen. No-one will mind or even notice a hypo here or a lighting fixture there going amiss. So…treat yourself. You still trying to impress that Nina Carnegie woman?"

 

"Erm…yes, sir."

 

"Well, maybe you can find some flowers or chocolates hidden amongst the offices or contraband stores here. Anyway", Coswell picked up the box of brass fixtures, accidentally knocking a broken typewriter, three other crates, a newspaper and a sextant onto the floor, "go. Go have the rest of the week off. You've earned it. We'll sort out all the blood and leaks and journalists and thieves and whatnot. You just go home. Or Arcadia…or Fort Frolic, maybe Eve's Garden?" Coswell slyly winked at Andrew. "Your performance in the takeover was extraordinary; you deserve a rest, my friend."

 

Coswell patted Andrew on the shoulder and continued on his way, deeper into the factory. "See you around Andrew. Take care."

 

"Bye boss. Have a nice week."

 

Andrew, alone again, stared at the broken BrainBoost. Well, there went all hopes of seducing Nina with intellect. Luckily, he still had all the other tonics.