There’s a world of difference between what we see and what IS.
Helena - Rapture - 1966
Gunfire rang out in Apollo Square, and Helena sighed, watching the splicers take shots at each other from her perch high on the wall. There were still pockets of peace in Rapture but his was most certainly not one of them. Small fires burned in corners and inside stores, automatic gun turrets blasted anything that moved, and a crudely built gallows stood in the middle of the square. There was a lot of blood. It was everywhere.
Walls around the square were still covered with old photos of missing persons and messages to disappeared loved ones. Helena had read every single letter, looked at every single photo, hundreds of them, years old. This place had claimed so many lives, destroyed so many families, turned friends and lovers against each other. She wished she could save them, all of them. She wished Sarah would come and save her.
Helena closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to think about Sarah's face again. The way she scrunched her nose up, the crooked little grin she wore when she was being naughty, the eyes identical to her own.
No, wait. They weren’t identical anymore. She sighed again and opened her eyes, dragging her gaze along the edges of the square. There were still the splicers to deal with. She hadn’t seen any of the Sisters down here today. She hoped they were learning to stay away from the more violent areas...but they still needed ADAM, and for that they needed ‘angels’, and for that…
She stood up, stepped forward, and dropped down onto the tiled floor thirty feet below. Her feet barely touched the ground before she leapt again and spun over the heads of the splicers, thrusting out a hand and sending two of them flying through the air towards the far wall. Landing gracefully, Helena tilted her head as the remaining splicers scrabbled to get away. She darted forward, impaling one on her syringe. It’s body slipped to the ground once the ADAM had been harvested, then, as fast as lightning, she jabbed the other two; their bodies slumped to the floor as well
Then she turned to the remaining duo. One was trying to pick herself up after hitting the wall at speed, snarling through a face that was mostly scars. Helena felt sorry for her, like a rabid animal that had to be put down. She did it quickly.
Turning to take care of the last splicer, she faltered as the invisible golden cord that connected her to the Little Sisters tugged at her - like a fizzing in her blood, and all the sounds surrounding her; the babbling of the splicer, the distant rat-tat-tat of a gun turret, the crackling of the random fires, the constant trickle of the leaking ocean; all these sounds became muffled like she had plunged into water.
Just on the edge of hearing, a voice said “my name is Sarah.”
Helenas heart gave a great thump in her chest and her breath came out in a gasping sob as sound came rushing back in, the world spun around her, and the splicer screamed and stabbed a rusty bar into her abdomen.
She blinked, looked down at the piece of metal sticking out of her, looked back up at the splicer, and grabbed him by the throat. Lifting him in the air effortlessly, she slid her syringe into the corresponding spot on his abdomen, drew out the ADAM, flicked her wrist and snapped his neck. The corpse dropped like a sack of potatoes. Helena had never had a sack of potatoes to drop but she was sure it made the same kind of thud. A memory of Maty making her and Sarah little roast potatoes, split open and stuffed with onions, dill and cream popped into her mind and the taste suddenly filled her mouth. Through her mind ran a litany of sarahsarahsarahsarah as she carefully grasped the iron bar and pulled it out of her body. The wound had started to close up by the time the bar hit the floor, splattering her blood over the tiles. The level of ADAM in Helena's system gave her regenerative powers faster than even the Sisters; she had been wounded more times than she could remember, but even scars vanished within hours.
Helena waited a moment, methodically stretching and probing the spot that had been impaled. No pain. Good. She looked up at the ceiling, but decided to go through the vent instead. She needed to be somewhere quiet and safe for a moment.
In the dim enclosed space, she curled up, wrapping her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. Her eyes glowed steadily golden. Could it be that Sarah was finally here? Really here? She came back?
What if she’d imagined it, or the ADAM was affecting her brain, or...she shook her head firmly. She took a deep breath and concentrated, feeling her way along the network of gold until she reached a Little Sister who was not alone, who was guiding someone. She probed a little further until - she crawled along the tunnel leading the dark-haired big sisters sister - a laugh bubbled out of Helena's mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she laughed.
Sarah was here, Sarah had come back for her, and Helena wouldn’t be alone anymore and she could go home and see maty again and Sarah was here, Sarah was here. She was laughing and tears were streaming down her face and she sat in the tunnel, laughing and crying and hearing Sarah's voice in her head - my name is Sarah my name is Sarah my name is Sarah
Helena wiped her face on her sleeves, and smiled.
The smile dimmed as she looked at her hands. Would they still fit in Sarah’s like they used to? Rachel had called her a monster...what if that was all Sarah saw? She had changed so much...what if Sarah was scared of her?
She shook her head, trying to dislodge her thoughts, and probed along the golden cord again to get a fix on her sister's location, and frowned. The Little Sister was helping Sarah, yes, but she wasn’t leading her to the safe room, unless it was by a very convoluted path. She concentrated hard on the girl. It was - Violet, as she called herself now, yes, Helena had met her, saved her from some splicers when her Big Daddy had fallen. The girls were usually so easy to read as to be transparent, but there was a door here, firmly closed.
It was silver, and made a sound like the buzzing and zapping of electricity.
Golden eyes snapped open and Helena, frozen for one impossibly long moment, started to scramble along the tunnel in panicky movements, until the overwhelming need to get to her sister over-rode her usual reluctance to teleportation, and she vanished in a swirl of purple-black light.