“Alone in the city…” thought Paul Winters,
one of the last few sane residents of Artemis Suites. Everyone else had lost
their minds to ADAM in this underwater nightmare of a city called Rapture,
built by a rich man named Andrew Ryan to escape from the world above. The city
was supposed to help people get away from the troubles of the world above the
sea, but once ADAM, a super addictive substance discovered in sea slugs by scientists, was introduced, things took a turn for the worse.
This ADAM was used to create Plasmids, which could give the citizens many different kinds of
powers. Super strength and super intelligence was where it started, but soon
thanks to Fontaine Futuristics, people were soon running around with the power
to shoot lightning from their hands, as well as fire, ice, wind, or even angry
hornets. Mass chaos broke out as people started fighting in the streets. Bodies were all over the place, and there was almost no safe haven from all the carnage. Paul himself had witnessed it firsthand. He
had watched in horror as his parents went crazy on ADAM, while he found he was somehow immune to the side effects.
At only eighteen years old, Paul had to watch
one night at the dinner table as his father in a rage injected himself with a BruteMore Plasmid during an
argument with his wife, and lost his mind. Anger took over with help of the plasmid, and he killed her by smashing a chair
directly over her head. He then turned toward the rest of his family and Paul knew what was coming next. He tried to fight him off, and keep him away from his
two younger siblings, Gregory and Susan. His father with super strength thanks to BruteMore, picked up the dinner table and tossed it at
Paul, who ducked and rolled out of the way. Paul reacted quickly and opened the
lower cabinet door below the sink. He found the double barrel shotgun, hidden
there when his parents were sane, in case a rogue splicer broke into the house.
He pulled it out from under the cabinet, and in an instant, loaded it with two
shots. His father let out a great big roar after noticing the shotgun, and charged at him. Paul abandoned
all hope of ever seeing his real father again, instead of this monster. He fired
twice at what used to be the man who raised him.
The blasts caught his father twice in the
chest, and caused the man to jerk backwards. But all was not over yet. His
father regained his balance, and prepared to charge once again. Paul had only
loaded the two shots, so he tossed the shotgun to the ground. He had one last
thing to rely on: his Telekinesis Plasmid. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
a long orange propane container. He knew it was fully filled, and knew what he
had to do. In what seemed like slow motion, he used his plasmid to toss the
propane container at his monstrous father. It was all over in an instant. The
explosion shook the room, and Paul had to cover his face due to the brightness.
When he moved his arms away from his face, he
saw the mess the fight had caused. There was blood all over the floor, with his
father’s lifeless body in flames in the corner, and his mother’s bloody corpse
lying near the refrigerator. Paul thought all the grief was gone, until he
realized he did not see Gregory or Susan anywhere in the room. Then it
happened, and Paul broke down in tears. There they were, in the corner, charred
black. He then realized it had happened during the explosion, and held their
cold, lifeless bodies in his arms, and cried until no more tears came out. “All
that power…and look what it did to my family…” said Paul to himself, sitting in
the one undamaged chair, in the house where it all had happened.
The flashback had ended, yet it would haunt
Paul’s dreams forever. He had had many sleepless nights since that one horrible
evening, and they still were continuous. He had boarded up the doors and windows
to prevent splicers from breaking in, yet could not completely shut himself off
from the world. So, he had left several small openings between the boards through
which he could look through at the city in ruins. This was done so he would not
go completely insane in seclusion, and to remind him that he would have to go back out
into the torn world again one day.
It had been a week and a half since that
fateful night, and there was still plenty of edible food throughout the apartment.
Still, Paul knew that he would have to let go of the guilt and grief, and knew
that one day he would have to leave the apartment. But leaving the apartment,
he knew would not be enough. To fully escape from his nightmarish memories, he would have
to leave Rapture. Which he knew would be no easy task... END OF CHAPTER ONE
