Quicklog, Bioshock: Elena M & Cris M
[Maybe everything was aquamarine preserved, chrome, gilt gold, Ayn Rand's wet dream laid out as some sort of lesson by designers in the 21st century, would you kindly and some deep, bloated philosophy about free will and objectivism. This was entertainment and that entertained Cris, in a wildly hysterical way. People played this place, on TVs, controllers in their hands, walking through the bubbled corridors of thick glass with only hands visible from the bottom of the screen for fun. But they couldn't get hurt like that, could they? They couldn't smell the stench, rich, cherry wood and stained by zealots, of blood and intestines, of skin peeled back from bone. The "splicers" they sent fireballs at from their palms were binary, imaginary, not men and women piled atop one another like some kind of overwrought mass grave, minds drug-addled and shaped by a poor interpretation of Survival of the Fittest.
The voice spitting from the grill of the intercom—ancient—all wrapped in neon piping, caught Cris' attention, the way a passing hook piqued the interest of a fish, unknowing as he was that it meant his demise. There was already a sheen of sweat filming his skin, and he'd come as prepared as he could, pack on his back, plenty of ammunition, and a suit—to fit in. No mask, but he wasn't gonna run around this rich man's hell with something over his eyes.] I'm not hiding. Just wait where you are. [Cris flattened a stock-white piece of paper on the bar, pushing the pearling puddle of blood aside with the bartender's rag. He'd printed a map of the place and he scanned it quick. Finger on that bronze knob.] ¿Por dónde?
[But there was no answer and Cris cursed his ex-wife for thinking she had to come back and get him when he was the one who came with maps and notes on the place. There was no panic on his features, washed as they were by bulbs and metal filament. It was just fierce concentration and his gut was tight with the same. He tried not to think about Sam or Teresa, Micah, Louis, Neil, any of it. There wasn't anything he could do about it, not until he was out, and even as an edge approached in his mind like a wall, an edge he knew he'd fall off of, he continued to skirt it, teeth on his bottom lip hard enough to cut.
He did go up the double-helix of the staircases bred art deco, steps fleeting beneath shoes two at a time, and the pack heavy against his spine. He crouched, pistol out, muzzle down, dress shirt thick over bullet proof vest, and he tried to ignore the incoherent babble of pickled minds. He didn't want to kill anyone, even people who were for all intents and purposes not real, and so he moved again, low to the ground, down a yellow-lit hall shelled in more dark wood, buggy screams pealing off of the geometry of chandeliers.
They had to get to some place called Fontaine's Lair. Squatting again, back against a grill of gold, Cris flipped through the printed pages, head up as he made sense of the layout.]