BioShock infinite burial at sea episode two

the truth about songbird and Elizabeth

(Elizabeth enters the tear, reappearing back in Columbia. She's actually on the First Lady, where it's docked in Finkton.] Elizabeth: Booker, look...we're on the First Lady. [She goes to exit into the bridge where Booker would normally be.] Elizabeth: It can't be this easy. The First Lady Mk. II was built around a particle lift system, just like all the buildings in the city. I read all about it in the "Columbian Scientific." The particle is seated at the top of the structure. Must be up that lift. [She looks around, spotting the lift.] Elizabeth: Perfect. Booker: Seems like a lotta technology just to float an airship. Comstock never heard of hydrogen? Elizabeth: The First Lady Mk. I did run on hydrogen and it was destroyed by a single bullet from a Vox sniper. Unfortunately, the Prophet wasn't onboard at the time. If I take the active particle, then the First Lady is just a 40-ton paperweight. Best to take the spare. [She takes the quantum particle capsule near the lift system.] Elizabeth: Here we go. Now let's head back through the tear. Booker: You honestly expect Atlas to honor his side of the deal? Elizabeth: No...but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Booker: How do you plan on handling Atlas? He ain't just some spliced-up maniac. Elizabeth: He'll make a mistake. I just have to be ready to take advantage of it when it happens. Booker: All for a girl you barely know. Elizabeth: How well did you know me when you came to Columbia? [She returns to the tear, but it doesn't let her come back. Suchong can be heard talking on the other side.] Suchong: Pretty lady not finished yet. Elizabeth: What? Open the tear! Suchong: Power for device very expensive. Tit for tat. Elizabeth: Just tell me what you want. Suchong: Suchong want something simple. Lock of hair. Elizabeth: Oh, you're not serious. Suchong: Not your hair, stupid! Fink has secret lab. Mothballed, forgotten. In there, hair sample. In jar. Cannot miss. You get for Suchong, then everybody friends. Elizabeth: Where is his lab? Suchong: Closed off, past Fink's quarters. You smart lady, you find. [The doctor signs off.] Elizabeth: Should have seen that one coming. [The airship shakes.] Booker: Vox Populi. We must have arrived right in the middle of the siege. Elizabeth: That means the other you and I are probably still in the factory... on our way up to the First Lady. Booker: And what happens if we run into ourselves? Elizabeth: We won't. Booker: How do you know that? Elizabeth: Because we didn't. [Liz sneaks toward Fink's office, eavesdropping on Daisy and the Luteces. Fink and his kid are blindfolded and bound to their chairs nearby.] Daisy: I've taken your counsel, and you done me good service. But I will not hurt the boy... I will see Fink and Comstock burn, but I will not hold the son to account for the deeds of his father. Rosalind: You've misunderstood us. Robert: We neither asked you to harm the child-- Rosalind: --nor did we promise that yours would be the hand that would set Comstock's world afire. Robert: A famous man once said-- Rosalind: And a famous man shall say-- Robert: --"I may reach the mountaintop..." Rosalind: "...but I fear I shall never visit the valley below." Daisy: But...you mean I won't live to see the-- ...No. Rosalind: It's up to you what matters more. Robert: Your part in the play-- Rosalind: --or the play itself. Robert: Someone is coming. Rosalind: She'll arrive a girl. Robert: She must leave a woman. Rosalind: And what makes the difference between a girl and a woman? Daisy: Blood. Robert: Your part in the play. Rosalind: Or the play itself. Daisy: Turn her into a killer, how? Robert: Give the girl no choice-- Rosalind: --and she will be forced to make one. [Liz sneaks towards the businessman's private quarters.] Elizabeth: Fink. Booker: What's that thing you just picked up? Elizabeth: My guess is it has something to do with that giant clock out there, and that clock has something to do with opening the door to Fink's lab. Booker: A giant clock. Elizabeth: Sort of...looks like the mechanism unlocks certain activities when Fink gives his blessing. Booker: So, what...? We're stuck waiting for the cuckook to go off? Elizabeth: No, we've already found the key. We can manually wind it, open whatever door we please. Booker: Sure seems like a lotta work to lock down a few doors. Elizabeth: Yeah, well, if there's one thing Fink loves, it's a lot of work. [They open the lab with the clock crank.] Elizabeth: Good. Now to get that idiot his lock of hair. [As she descends the elevator, she can hear the "other" Booker with Daisy.] Booker: Fitzroy. Listen, I got you your guns. I'm here for my airship. Daisy PA: But my Booker DeWitt died for the Vox Populi. You either an imposter or a ghost. [The lift silently passes by the "other" Booker and Elizabeth.] Daisy PA: My Booker DeWitt was a hero to the cause. A story to tell your children. You...you just complicate the narrative. [Seeing her journey in third person gets Liz in a reflective mood.] Elizabeth: Booker, you there? ...I miss you. You were the only one who ever... You were my only friend. Booker... Booker: I'm not even here. I'm a projection of your own-- Elizabeth: Could you humor me, then? ...Please? Booker: I think...Booker would miss you. [Liz infiltrates deeper into the workshop.] Elizabeth: Daisy sacrificed herself...set me up to kill her, to-to turn me in -- to turn me into what? Booker: A killer. Elizabeth: Yeah, well, mission accomplished. I'm no martyr. How did you do it, Booker? How did you-- Booker: Elizabeth...I'm not Booker. Elizabeth: And neither am I. [She infiltrates the surgical wing.] Elizabeth: Hair sample in a haystack. [There's a prototype Big Daddy suit in the observation wing.] Booker: Huh, seems like Fink and Suchong were sharing their research. Elizabeth: Like the Luteces. Cross-reality collaboration. [A projector nearby has images of a Big Daddy.] Elizabeth: It all makes a kind of sense...the Little Sisters and the Big Daddies...Songbird and me. Booker: Constants and variables. [Downstairs is an ape hooked to a machine and a small female effigy.] Booker: What is all this? Elizabeth: Imprinting. That's a wire mother. If you separate a gorilla from its real mother, it will imprint on almost anything...even that. Booker: Why would Fink care about that? Elizabeth: Songbird. He wanted him to imprint on me. Booker: Well, if I recall, that was a problem he solved. [Liz picks up a paper about chemical bonds.] Booker: What's that? Elizabeth: It's a skeletal formula for...oxytocin. That's the chemical that bonds mothers to children, women to men, and-- Booker: Songbirds to little girls? Elizabeth: Apparently not. Fink dismissed it as an unsuitable vector. [A nearby room has massive tanks full of animals floating in solution.] Elizabeth: These poor things. Fink couldn't get them to imprint...so he left them to die. [A blackboard notes the project's poor results.] Elizabeth: "Imprinting failed." That can't be right. Clearly they formed a connection between Songbird and me. Booker: How? Elizabeth: I was so young, I...I always remember him just being there. [Through the glass is part of a Songbird, still moving around.] Elizabeth: It must be a prototype or something. Booker: Is it human? Elizabeth: Does it matter? [A paper's nearby.] Elizabeth: They tried hypnotherapy. Booker: On the Songbird? How'd that go? Elizabeth: About as well as you'd expect. [In an abandoned room, Liz finds footage of Songbird and a younger her. The bird looks partially broken. Young Liz reconnects its mouth hose properly.] Elizabeth: Booker...the little girl in the film, its me. My god...I re--...I remember, he...he was... He'd crashed into the tower. I guess he was in some sort of fight... I waited there, thinking...thinking, I don't know, that something would happen, but...he just...lay there...moaning. I couldn't just-- Booker: The lion with a thorn in its paw. So much for science. Elizabeth: I should have just left him there to die. I should have just... I will never escape it. Exploited. Exploiting. Me, Comstock, you, Sally. It's like a wheel of blood, spinning round and round. [She finds a tube on a desk of her old personal effects Fink had collected.] Elizabeth: Well, this must be the genetic sample Suchong wanted. Booker: He sent you all the way back here for a sample of your own hair? Elizabeth: He doesn't know I was once the child that imprinted on Songbird. But to him, all the answers lie in DNA. Men like Suchong mistake an ounce of empathy for a pound of science. [Liz lifts the quarantine shutters at a control panel.] Vox: It's open! See if anything's worth reappropriating. Check for stragglers! Spread out! [Evading the Vox, Liz returns to the lab elevator.] Elizabeth: Do you think Daisy really even had a choice? Booker: What do you mean? Elizabeth: Right about now, I'm planting a pair of scissors in her back to protect a child she was never going to harm. She chose to die for her revolution...what about me? For all the endless worlds, all the infinite possibilities, did I ever even have a choice? Did you? Booker: Yeah, Booker thought he did. Elizabeth: And look where it got us. Right back where it started. All these infinite universes...and yet we end up just going down the same paths. Booker: I don't take your meaning. Elizabeth: My father sold me to settle a marker. Comstock locked me up in a tower. And I sold Sally -- for what? Revenge? To prove a point? Booker: And yet, here you are. Settling the debt. Elizabeth: And say we find her. The old pass their damage to the young. Isn't it too late for her now? Booker: Well, I'd say that's up to her to decide. Just as coming back here was up to you. Elizabeth: Rapture runs on children. Little girls with gold growing in their bellies. I'm not going to break any cycle. If I'm lucky, maybe I can dent it...just a little. [Back outside, Liz finds the "other" Booker and Elizabeth have already played their role: Fink and Daisy are dead, and the First Lady is gone. The Rapture tear is still nearby.] Suchong: Pretty lady has the hair? Deal is deal. Bring it to Suchong. [Liz enters the tear, returning to Rapture's Silver Fin. The ground shakes.] Suchong: Pretty lady put hair sample in tube. Then business is finished. Elizabeth: What's going on out there? Suchong: Bloodshed...violence...but not relevant to our arrangement. [She puts the sample in the pneumo tube, causing the lights to drop out.] Elizabeth: Suchong! Suchong, we had a deal, now open-- [The lights come on as a projector with Andrew Ryan's face appears.] Ryan: Do you know what they call someone who enters a man's home uninvited? A thief. And I do not remember inviting you into my city. Elizabeth: I had a deal with Suchong. Ryan: Yi Suchong is my employee. It was not a deal he was authorized to make. Elizabeth: What do you want? Ryan: I granted Atlas and his thugs asylum. You serve those same men in a desire to escape from my generosity. If they shall not have asylum, then they shall have liquidation. Give a parasite an ounce of charity, he'll demand a pound. Elizabeth: I'm just looking for a girl that was taken from me. A Little Sister. Ryan: I don't claim to understand what you are...but I know that you are special. There is business we can do together. And so, I give you a choice: work for me...or die with Atlas. Elizabeth: I'm not going anywhere without that girl. Ryan: If it's a Little Sister you want, that shouldn't stand in the way of commerce. I've got dozens of them. Elizabeth: I won't leave without her. Ryan: My men stand ready to take down the door. In 60 seconds, they will enter the room. They will either treat you as a valued employee of Ryan Industries...or as a thief in the night. [The communication ends.] Booker: Sixty seconds. Elizabeth: There must be a half a dozen of them or more. I've gotta get ready. Now, traps...I can use the Plasmids as traps and seed the room with them. I gotta find somewhere to hide, and...and surprise them, take them down one by one. Booker...I'm scared... Booker: They'll underestimate you, Elizabeth. People always do. Ryan: Forty seconds. You know what I see on your face? Uncertainty. Who is this girl to you? Thirty seconds. Do you know the value of the shark? Without them, the sea would be littered with the detritus of the weak. The men who come for you have much in common with those great animals. What sharks do for the ocean, these men do for Rapture. Twenty seconds. I will tell you something you already sense: Atlas does not honor agreements. Andrew Ryan does. I cannot save your Sally...but I can save you. Time. You're not a hero. You're not even a parasite. You're just a rube...and Andrew Ryan has no time for rubes. [Ryan's men storm the place, but Liz holds her own to the last.] Elizabeth: I beat your sharks, Ryan. The better man won. Isn't that the only thing you respect? Now let me the hell outta here. Atlas: Sounds like all hell's breakin' loose out there! What's your plan? Elizabeth: I can't just place the particle on the ceiling, it would just tear right through it. But...every building in Rapture was submerged into the ocean on a lunette ring connected to the junction of its load-bearing supports. Atlas: That's fascinatin' and all, but if you haven't noticed, Ryan's sent his goons to murder us! If you're gonna pull a rabbit out of a hat, now's the time to do it. [She whips out the blueprints she acquired earlier.] Elizabeth: It looks like the structural junction is in Frank Fontaine's office. If I can get there, I can float the building. Atlas: It so happens I've taken that bastard's office for me own use. I'll make sure you've access to the private elevator. Now hurry! [Sneaking through the battle, Liz returns to the Manta Ray lounge.] Splicer: There's supposed to be a brunette... Anyone seen her? Look around! The rest of Atlas's crew are barricaded up that elevator shaft. When the backup arrives, we'll go in and take 'em out easy. [The elevator's finally reached.] Booker: Elizabeth, you know Atlas is going to-- Elizabeth: I know...and I'm ready. Booker: Are you sure? Elizabeth: I sent myself here for a reason...didn't I? Ryan: And who exactly are you speaking to, Miss Comstock? If I were less acquainted with the vicissitudes of genius, I suspect I would question your sanity. I know so little of you, but I imagine the more I learned, the more exceptional I would find you. You know Atlas will betray you. Elizabeth: And what are you? My best friend? Ryan: You're one of a kind in this world, or others. And now, your misguided sense of altruism sends you to your doom. It's like watching Isaac Newton die in a house fire in a vain attempt to save his cat.