Beyond the Sea - Prologue
Sarah - 1966
She still had nightmares about that day. Her hands had gripped her sisters so tight they felt like the bones would break. It hadn’t been tight enough. They had been torn from each other, screaming, men in white coats struggling to hold the pair of nine year olds apart.
Sarah jerked awake, still hearing the screams, the muffled metallic banging, the woman’s voice shouting “немає!”
Her hands ached from gripping the sheets.
Six years. Six bloody years, and she still couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at a stretch. That place. Fontaine’s Little Sister’s Orphanage. ‘Bringing big smiles to little faces’. What a load of bollocks. It was a factory, a production line of little girls. If she ever had the chance to punch Fontaine in the face, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop...but she’d heard someone else had done that for her. He was long gone.
After the five years in the orphanage, The Little Wonders Educational Facility had seemed magical. There had been real beds, enough food, plenty of toys. She had been with her sister. There had been mama Tenenbaum and Mr Bubbles. And after the...after the treatment, the world had glowed. They had seen angels and played in the garden.
Now all of them were gone.
Sarah sat up in the dark and put her head in her hands. She couldn't go on like this. She knew by now what happened to Little Sisters who hosted the precious ADAM for too long. Stories had been passed up the pipeline, by others who had made it out. Dark shrouded figures with red glowing eyes, screeching that shook the air, appearing out of nowhere to bring death to anyone who threatened the remaining girls, like the avenging angels of old.
Angels, thought Sarah bitterly, Soldiers of God…but there'd never been any gods in that place. That was the whole point. ‘No Gods or Kings, Only Man’. That motto had been everywhere you turned. It was men who had built the city under the sea, men who had twisted and exploited the ADAM, men who had stolen her sister from her.
She knew her sister was still alive. She could feel it. After all this time...even if she had become some sort of monster, it wasn’t her fault. She was still her sister. Sarah’s lips twisted into a smile. A Big Sister, now. She sighed, leaned her head back against the wall, staring ahead at the faint light creeping in around the window blind. No one knew if the Big Sisters could be saved. No one knew if they could even be brought to the surface, if the ADAM could still be removed. No one had ever tried. But it was time someone did. Sarah didn't know how but she had to get Helena back.
And that meant returning to Rapture.