Welcome to Rapture [Prologue]
erikfuckinglensherr said: Erik is Jack. Bioshock. Gogogo!
[ok so. SINCE YOU SAID I COULD INSTEAD DO THE FIRST BIT OF MY BIOSHOCK FIC FOR THIS. HERE YOU GO DARLING]
Title: Welcome to Rapture
Pairing: Cherik
Summary: Erik didn’t expect to survive a plane crash in the Mid-Atlantic, only suddenly to find himself struggling to survive for an entirely different reason. He doesn’t understand anything his telepathic guide is talking about - other than the fact that, apparently, with one injection, Erik can suddenly control metal. (or, if he feels like it, electrocute people, set them on fire, telekinetically move things, or turn people into blocks of ice)
He could really, really, do without the mask-wearing nutjobs jumping on walls and trying to set him on fire or stab him with giant hooks.
Or, you know, the creepy little girls with syringes who seem to be best friends with giant men who reek of pus and blood and walk around in mutated scuba gear.
-
“So yeah, London wasn’t really my bag. I can’t wait to get back to America.” The girl next to Erik droned airily, tugging on a dark lock of hair before curling it around her finger. She looked up, smiling at Erik and raking her eyes over his body quickly before reaching his face.
“What brings a cat like you to America, anyway?”
Erik grunted, slouching lower in his seat and lifting his fedora from where he’d set it on his knees and placing it over his face. He sniffed tiredly, fingers clasped on his stomach as he mumbled, “Job offer.”
Anything else the girl said, he eagerly tuned out in favor of trying to catch a few hours of sleep before they landed in San Francisco.
“A job offer? He’s a fockin’ Kraut! Who th’fuck gives a job to a fockin’ Kraut when ya got respectable people in London lookin’ for work every day a’their lives!?”
Erik cracked an eye open, staring at the inside of his hat and clenching his teeth at the harsh cockney accent from the man sitting in front of them. The girl beside Erik hissed, followed by the sound of her smacking the other man on the arm or shoulder as the man cursed in retaliation.
“Don’t say stuff like that, Morty! God, you’re such a toad!” She barked, and Erik lifted his fedora to see them in a staring contest as ‘Morty’ rubbed his arm and winced.
“It’s fockin’ true, iddn’t it, Angel?” Morty protested, hand flying up to avoid another slap from the girl - aptly named ‘Angel’.
Erik rolled his eyes as the plane hit a patch of turbulence, moving to buckle his seatbelt while Angel and Morty bickered angrily about whether or not Erik had a right to work in the US.
Erik replaced his fedora over his face, eyes falling shut to the erratic rumbling of turbulence. The bickering around him died off, turning into a discussion on how long the plane was going to shake for as the pilot’s voice asked all passengers to put on their seatbelts due to an approaching, unforeseen ice storm.
Erik felt Angel sit back in her seat, the plane chorusing in the clicks of restraints being buckled and the creaking groan of metal.
The first thud tore a shriek from Angel, her hand flying to Erik’s forearm reflexively and pulling a growl from Erik before he could stop himself. The second and third thumps were just as loud, and broke the silence of fear as passengers started to panic. Erik took his fedora off again, setting it on his head and seeing Angel and Morty both looking out of their windows, yelping about ice storms and hail.
That was when the plane lurched, the following crunch nearly deafening. Erik felt his stomach drop before it jumped up into his throat as the plane started to veer sideways, the nose dropping.
“The engine’s caught fire!” Someone cried, which, really, just made every passenger start screaming as the plane twisted and spiraled out of control.
Erik, clutching the arms of his seat, sucked in a sharp breath and bent forward. He hugged his knees tightly, trying to overcome the nausea that came over him with every lurch of the plane. Angel was screaming, and he peeked an eye open to see her hugging the back of Morty’s seat, sobbing and crying with unmitigated fear. Erik clenched his eyes shut again, trying to drown out the shriek of metal on metal of something on the plane tearing, and the burst of implosive air that barraged against his body.
He relaxed, mentally going over his times tables in English - an old habit he’d picked up to practice the language when he and his parents had first escaped from Germany to London during the war- and dragged in long, slow breaths while the entire plane seemed to devolve into utter chaos.
It wasn’t hard to know when they hit the water, the plane gave a violent, bone-shuddering jerk and Erik felt his entire body jolt out of his seat, head smashing the back of the chair in front of him and seatbelt digging into his lower stomach. Everything was a bursting blur of pain, his breath leaving him in a pained heave and the world tilting on its axis.
Erik clenched his eyes shut, wheezing for air and scrambling to unbuckle his seatbelt. Some of the passengers were already dead - necks snapped from the impact - and others are wild with fright. Erik coughed, his head reeling and struggling to focus on the damn buckle long enough to unlock it. He fell out of his seat with a lurch, body thudding into the back of the chair in front of him - the plane had apparently landed nose-first - and looking around wildly. Angel was sobbing, clinging to her chair still, and Morty had curled into a ball in his seat with his head hugged to his knees.
Erik turned his gaze to the bottom of the plane, where the water rushing in from a hole in the hull was apparently struggling for dominance against the flames that were roaring across the top of the water from the destroyed fuel tank. He could tell it wouldn’t be long before the flame spread across the plane, igniting the rest of it and sending all of them to their graves.
Erik grunted, squinting and trying to focus his thoughts. They needed to get out of the plane, they needed to get away from the fire before it consumed them all. He reached out, grabbing Angel by a thin shoulder and shaking it.
“H-hey! The plane’s on fire, come on!” Erik tugged until she was broken from her stupor. Angel stared at him with wide, tear-streaked eyes, and then realized what he was saying.
“Morty!” She cried, fumbling with her seatbelt and then reaching forward to check on her friend, “Morty, come on! We gotta get outta dodge, man!”
Erik didn’t wait to see if she followed, pulling himself up and climbing over hysterical passengers and the bodies of the unfortunate to reach the emergency hatch. He pried it open with a grunt, staring down at the dark, murky ocean below and sucking in a breath before he jumped.
His feet hit the water first, body spinning and tumbling through the ocean as disorientation struck Erik harder than a train. He struggled to hold his breath, swimming deeper as waves burst around him from Angel and Morty hitting the water. He pried his eyes open, lungs burning and struggling through the water towards the surface. He took only a few seconds to pull off his suit jacket, leaving it in the water and kicking upwards once more. There was fire everywhere, and Erik had to swallow down the need to gasp for air as a propeller went whizzing past his face.
He broke surface, sucking in a painful, heaving breath and kicking to keep afloat so he could wipe the stinging saltwater from his face. He gagged, spitting out seawater that had slipped in between the corners of his lips and forcing his body to swim out of the fire surrounding him from the wreckage of the plane.
It was hard to breathe, the icy wind making the ocean a frigid prison, while the flames around him made his skin want to boil. Bits of hail plunked into the water around him, and Erik could hear hysterical screaming that sounded particularly like Angel from somewhere nearby. He ignored her, kicking and swimming towards some sort of lighthouse that wasn’t too terribly far away.
The closer he got to it, the more he realized that it wasn’t a lighthouse, but something else. There was a stairway leading from the ocean up into the tall, thin building - with small lamp posts that flickered and lit the way to a single door.
Erik climbed the steps, panting as his ruined suit dripped all over the stone beneath his feet. He shakily made his way up to the door, turning and looking for any survivors in the wreckage. He caught sight of Angel and Morty, as well as two or three others swimming about the wreckage, and waved one arm while cupping a palm to his mouth.
“Over here!” He shouted, watching as one of the passengers swam through an oily patch of water just seconds before it burst into flames. His screams were like a trigger, making the others in the water start to panic even more than they already were. Erik shouted again, his head pounding and his neck aching with the pain of the earlier impact.
He saw the silhouette of Angel and Morty swimming closer, followed by another young man and an older woman. Erik made his way down to the bottom steps, holding a hand out to help Angel and then the older woman up (she was probably no younger than fifty five, at the most.) before glancing around to the ragtag group of survivors. He took a deep breath, glancing out over the wreckage and then up to the closed doors.
“Ohmygod. ohmygodohmygod-” Angel breathed, eyes wide as the situation hit her. She clasped a hand to her mouth, running back towards the end of the stairs just in time to heave violently into the water. Erik crinkled his nose in disgust, shrugging at the other survivors and heading for the large, intricate door.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t locked, and with enough shifting of his weight, Erik was able to pull it open with a loud groan of half-rusted hinges. He didn’t wait to see if the others followed him, stepping into the black room and almost jumping out of his skin when the lights shuttered in with a loud hum and click. Erik could hear the others approaching, their feet loud on the pristine marble floors while he caught sight of a staircase leading down.
Shrugging to himself - he was cold, wet, and he’d just survived a plane wreck; it couldn’t get much worse - Erik headed for the stairs, a little less startled when more lights would come to life every time he neared darkness. Nobody spoke until, reaching the end of the stairs, soft music started to echo throughout the room- a vaguely familiar orchestral tune that Erik must have heard once or twice during his time hiding in London when the War was still going on.
“Hell no, man.”
Not recognizing the male voice, Erik looked up to see the young man - a greaser, no doubt, with his dark, wet hair slicked back and his white tee practically transparent as the man gestured towards the stairs. “Man, this place is wiggin’ me out. I’m gonna split. Y’all dudes can go down there and check out what’s goin’ on, but I’m gonna wait topside for a rescue plane.” As he spoke, he started walking backwards, shrugging off the looks that Angel and the older woman gave him, and disappearing back out the door.
Erik glanced to Angel and Morty, and then to the older woman. They didn’t seem too keen on staying outside and watching dead bodies from the wreck float about, and so Erik continued heading down the steps until they came upon a round metal vessel floating in a bottomless circle of water. There was a stone bridge leading into it, the glass door open and revealing an interior of copper and iron, with lavish red cushions and a platform in the center that held a lever.
Fog curled and floated around the small vessel, making the orange lamp inside of it seem dim.
“Creepy,” Angel whispered, her small and delicate hands pressing to Erik’s back, trembling. Erik rolled his shoulders - not quite brushing her off - and stepped into the sphere, arms stabilizing his balance as it rocked on the water. He gestured for the others to come in as well, reaching for the lever in the center.
“Wouldn’t hurt to see where this goes,” Erik mused, giving the lever a tug after the other three were completely inside. The door to the sphere swung shut, sealing itself before the sphere rocked and sunk below the water.
“Oh my god, are we going to drown? I am so not down for drowning twice today,” Angel whined, sitting down beside Morty and crowding up into his space with a nervous shake. Morty grimaced, but let her cling to his arm like a leech as they dropped deeper and deeper down. Bubbles shot up in front of the glass door as they became submerged, the only audible sound besides the hum of an unseen engine.
There must have been lights attached on the outside of the sphere, illuminating gaudy signs that reminded Erik of Hollywood, each one boasting a higher number of fathoms. He was a little confused about the sculpture when they hit 18 fathoms, a nude, blue figure reaching upwards with lots of unnecessary decoration around it.
Suddenly, a screen came down over the window and Angel shrieked in Morty’s ear before laughing at herself nervously when a projector flickered to life, playing a video where the window had been. Erik didn’t really follow it - not much outside of some woman rambling about politics with silly illustrations and a self portrait to follow - and instead focused his energy on running his fingers along his neck and head to try and rub out some of the pain that had come from the wreck.
The woman on the projector’s voice rose, boasting pride and exultant confidence as she breathed the word, “Rapture,” and the veil dropped to reveal an intricate, underwater city. Erik, momentarily, forgot to breathe as a giant squid meandered by, as if part of the scene. There were fish and sea creatures of all sorts, swimming in and around tall, glowing buildings with neon signs labeling them. Erik could see long, glass-encased walkways leading from one section of the city to the next, his eyes unable to take everything in before they were propelled to another area.
All the while, the woman from the projector continued to talk - her voice coming from a radio somewhere inside of the sphere. Honestly, Erik didn’t understand how she could think that anyone would listen to her incessant rambling, not when there was an entirely new world to be taken in before you.
They reached another series of walkways, as Angel and the older woman plastered themselves to the lower half of the window to point and awe over a great whale as it swam beneath them. A flash of light caught the corner of Erik’s eye, and he snapped his head up to see something moving across the walkway before it burst into flames just as the sphere went under the walkway and obscured whatever had happened from sight.
Erik stumbled over Angel and the older woman, trying to move so that he could see if it really had been a person who’d caught fire, but they’d already moved too far ahead.
“Ow! Come on, daddy-o, can’t you chill out? Look, look- is that a shark?” Angel breathed, her face crushed into the glass. Morty shoved at Erik’s hip, trying to get him to move so that he could see the shark that Angel was gushing about. Erik scowled, his temples throbbing in pain as the sphere started heading for a series of black, metal supports that looked like a docking bay specifically designed for their vessel.
Pain flared in Erik’s head and he winced at the same time as everyone else. Cursing, Erik’s hands flew to his ears to try and block out the sudden ringing noise while Angel whined and Morty cursed.
The ringing died down suddenly as they reached the inner rows of the docking area, whispers of speech ghosting the edges of Erik’s hearing as he turned around for a second to see if the radio had turned back on.
Terribly sorry about that, my friends.
Erik whirled back around, eyes wild as everyone in the sphere gave shouts of confused surprise in response to the kind, accented voice of a gentleman with no visible body.
I haven’t had to project myself this far in quite some time, I hope you’ll forgive that bit of momentary pain.
“Hello?” The older woman called out hesitantly, a hand pressed nervously to her breast as she looked heavenwards. A soft, amused chuckle trickled into Erik’s head.
No, dear. I’m not God. Far from it, really. We’ll have this chat later, however. Right now, I need all of you to listen to me. Very. Carefully.
Their vessel shook as it was fully docked, shaking as it was lifted upwards.
You’re about to see some very frightening things, but I need all of you to remain calm and listen to me. I can guide you to safety, but only if you do exactly as I say.
The room they came to a stop in was dark, save for the mild illumination from the neon lights shining in through the glass windows and the occasional flicker of lights.
Don’t move, and don’t make a sound - not until I tell you to.
At first, Erik thought he might be going crazy, until there was a shriek of laughter somewhere out of sight. Angel gasped, hands clapping over her mouth to keep silent as Morty pressed his face into the glass in an attempt to see what had caused the noise.
“No! No- nonono, NO!” A man’s hysterical voice broke through the silence, and everyone turned to see a figure running by the window. The shriek was louder this time, as something dropped down from the ceiling with a glint of metal and a howl. There was a crunch, and an agonized wail that cut off with an abrupt gurgle, blanketing them in silence.
The woman next to Erik gasped, the beginning of a scream leaving her before Erik could wrap his hand around her mouth and snatch her close to keep her quiet. She cried into his palm, but it was heavily muffled from the force of Erik’s grasp.
“Shut, up,” Erik hissed into her ear, tensing when the figure that had been digging into its victim stood up - a dark outline against the window. It must have been female, from the psychotic mumbling that came from it before the thing leapt up again, only to drop down not two feet in front of their vessel.
Angel gasped, both Morty and herself stumbling back into Erik and the older woman as the person outside bobbed to and fro to try and peer through the glass.
“Someone knew?” It hissed, blood-drenched hooks in each hand glinting off the flickering lights. In Erik’s arms, the woman squirmed and gasped, her body going unbearably tense before her knees buckled. Erik lowered her to the ground slowly, happier that she’d fainted instead of started up screaming again, and looked up just as the figure outside of the vessel took a step back, sucked in a breath, and released a deafening, howling scream that vibrated through both vocal chords and sent chills straight down Erik’s spine.
It crouched, leaping up and hitting the roof of the sphere with a mighty thud.
“Oh my god. Oh god. OHgodohgodohgodohgod…” Angel whined, pressing her face into her hands as her voice got higher and higher until it cracked. The vessel lurched, another scream coming from above as the sound of metal scraping metal became deafening.
Erik stumbled, holding to the pedestal with the lever for support while Angel and Morty clutched to each other. The interior lights flickered, howls of rage coupled with groaning metal as the creature tried to claw its way inside. Angel let out a soft sob, crying into Morty’s shoulder while Erik frantically kept his gaze upwards - hoping he could at least disarm the thing of one of its hooked weapons were it able to break through the hull.
More suddenly than it had begun, the cacophony stopped. There was a frustrated, growling huff and a dip as something jumped from the sphere, and then nothing.
Angel whimpered, curled up in Morty’s arms and shaking violently as Erik caught sight of the figure landing near the window across the room, slinking off as if pouting.
Sorry about that, chaps. Best to keep quiet when there’s splicers about, you see. Now, she’s gone off to find something else to kill, so I’ll need the lot of you to move quickly. Oh- and don’t bother with Illyse, I’m afraid the old girl’s heart gave out from that scare.
Erik’s head snapped down to the woman who’d fainted in his arms, reaching out to feel for a pulse and finding nothing. He cursed, ignoring the way his hands couldn’t stop shaking, and curled them into fists.
No need to feel guilty, Erik, there’s nothing you could’ve done for her. What you can do, however, is get yourselves out of there and somewhere safe before that splicer comes back.
Erik, knowing that sitting still would leave them as targets anyway, pressed the button next to the glass door to open it with a hiss of decompression. Angel grabbed his leg as he walked by, still on the ground and holding to Morty, but Erik gave her a shrug.
“Stay here, if you want, but I’ve been helpless enough in my life, there’s no point in being that way now.” Erik stepped out of the sphere and onto steady ground, squinting through the darkness and focusing his thoughts.
-Does my savior have a name? Or at least the location of a weapon?-
A soft, warm laugh chimed in Erik’s head, followed by a flash of images that gave Erik an idea of what direction he needed to go.
You’re very brave for a man fighting the unknown. I think I’m going to like you, friend.
Erik turned, peering at a giant tube the size of an average man, the glass broken in and bits of blood dried on edges of it. He went the opposite way, hearing Angel and Morty scramble to keep up with him as he followed the man’s mental suggestion of where to go.
-A friend without a name can’t be much of a friend, you know. Especially when possibly leading a man to his death in a strange place.-
The laugh was back again, still light, but with an edge of bitterness to it.
You can call me Charles Xavier, friend, and as for this strange place? I should just say, heh… Welcome to Rapture.
