Booker DeWitt

He spends the first few days back in a bottle, wracked with guilt and pain unlike anything he's ever felt. But it doesn't help. The memories, fresh as if they had happened last week instead of twenty years ago, won't leave him alone and here in Darrow there just isn't anywhere left to run. There aren't any wars to go off and fight, and while the temptation to hit the tables or see if he can't pick a fight in a bar somewhere is strong, he resists it. She wouldn't want him to.

Elizabeth.

Anna.

Two sides of the same coin and he's the one that had set them spinning. It was his doing, all of it. He sold his daughter to a man who promised her a better life than the one Booker could give and the man had been a monster. Comstock locked his little girl in a tower, treated her like an experiment and tried to make her his... sacrificial lamb or whatever the hell Comstock had planned. Booker still hasn't figured that out. There's nothing he can do to ever fix that.

But he has to start somewhere. For whatever it's worth, he is her father. And he had been planning on getting her something for the holiday before everything had gone so crazy. So today, even though it's after Christmas, he's standing at her door, freshly showered and shaved with a small package in his hands. Only he can't bring himself to knock. She'd made it perfectly clear when she moved out that she was done with him and after that whole mess back in New York she might hate him even more now. He doesn't blame her. He hates himself quite a bit these days. So in the end, he leans over and sets the wrapped gift near the doorframe and turns to leave.

Best if he's not here when she finds it.

When he wakes up it's slowly, his neck screaming and his mouth tasting the wrong end of a horse. It's a familiar, if somewhat disorienting feeling. The kind of feeling he used to have waking up after - no. Not again. Booker's eyes fly open and the first thing he does is grab the paper. It's still on his desk, just like before, same date and everything. Whatever's happening is still happening and he'll be hanged if this time he doesn't stop it cold.

Reaching into his desk, he pulls out his revolver, checking to make sure it's loaded.

"What is it you Americans are so fond of saying? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"

Lutece. Raising the gun, Booker takes aim at the man standing in the corner.

"Really, Mr. DeWitt, do you think that is going to get you out of this predicament? You should consider yourself lucky, my sister isn't nearly as convinced as I am of your eventual success. She'd simply allow you to keep going over and over again. Or she will. So hard to tell the difference sometimes."

Pulling the hammer back, Booker can hardly recognize the growl that comes up from his chest, "What kind of sick game is this? What do you want?"

"I want? Dear, man, haven't you guessed it yet, this has nothing to do with me. But do let's wait for the ladies to rejoin us so that we might all get on the same page. I fear some new ground rules need to be established."

Booker doesn't lower the gun, but he eases off the trigger a little. "Fine. We'll wait."

When he wakes up it's slowly, his neck screaming and his mouth tasting the wrong end of a horse. It's a familiar, if somewhat disorienting feeling. The kind of feeling he used to have waking up after a night of gambling at the saloon down the street, after passing out on his desk with a bottle in his hand. But that was before Columbia, before her and last night he can swear he fell asleep in the living room. Still with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and still after gambling away what he should probably be spending on food, but he shouldn't be face-down anywhere. Unless he's fallen off the sofa.

Wouldn't be the first time.

Cracking his eyes open, he blinks in the diffused light. Something's wrong. There's something over the window - shutters? He doesn't have shutters over his windows, just those blinds things. And some curtains Elizabeth bought. He's surprised she didn't take them with her. Maybe she did. Maybe that's why the light hurts. Groaning, he pulls himself upright, blinking as his eyes adjust... and then blinking again. In the gloom he can see a door across from him. An old familiar door with old familiar lettering. He can only see the backside of it, but he knows what it says: Booker DeWitt Investigations into Matters Both Public and Private. His eyes drift down and he can see the papers, New York, 1912.

He's home. Whatever that means.

Straining to his feet, he grabs the nearby, always nearby, bottle and takes a swig, carrying it as he heads to the washroom to relieve himself and splash some water on his face. Was it all a dream? Some kind of drunken hallucination. Whatever it was, he's mostly glad it's gone. The whole thing was a wreck from the minute that man knocked on his door.

He hasn't worked much since coming back from the world with the monsters. He tells himself that its because his arm's taken longer to heal than he thought and he doesn't want to screw up a hunt. But he knows better. It's the drinking and the gambling that he's been picking back up. Nights he stays out to sober up before going home, telling Elizabeth that he's working, using his winnings in lieu of actual wages, hoping he comes out at least even if not ahead at the end of the night. He's probably starting to get attention from places he doesn't but he can't really bring himself to care much.

He's in way over his head. He could almost handle Darrow, but knowing that Darrow itself could just melt away to some kind of nightmare, that it could take Elizabeth away and never giver her back... That hurts in a way he can't explain. His headaches, migraines, according to Emma, are getting worse and that's just another thing on the damn list. How can he protect her when she could walk through a door and disappear? He made himself a promise, get her out of Columbia, get her free. Guess he managed the first, but the second's getting harder by the day.

Shifting in his car seat he winces at the pain in his arm and he takes a pull of whiskey from the flask in his pocket. It's supposed to be an easy job, but his mark sure seems to be taking his damn sweet time leaving his girlfriend's place. His phone is silent and he's wondering if the girl's had second thoughts about calling him when her man leaves. Be just his luck if he's sitting here while his mark's sneaking out the back. With a curse, he opens the door. Might as well go check the back. Can't kill him, right?

The Midnight Isle is no longer empty, if it ever was. There are people now, four of them, people from far away and they don't know where they are or how they got there. They've been wandering, lost, worried, watching the long dark halls and listening to the strange sounds in the walls. They were alone, then in pairs and now they're together, locked in the command center. Time has passed, but there's power and there are records if the people are smart enough to pull them up. The door's got a good lock... for now.

Night, or what passes for it has come. The sounds are getting louder, whatever's there knows there's people on the Isle again. New people. Whole people. They have a taste for people now and they're wandering inside the walls, claws scratching inside their new metal home, looking for the people. They don't see well in the light, they don't like it, but power can't last forever. The generators have to cycle down every few months, they did six months ago and they're overdue. Must be running pretty hot by now. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, they'll shut down.

Tonight might be the last night these people have.

The remote mining colony on CX-4593 had been radio silent for six months.

The colony, nicknamed the Midnight Isle by the miners trapped in its perpetual darkness, had been running at peak efficency until the drills hit and cracked a mineral that their local geologists could not identify. After sending a copy of the readings and initial scientific findings back to Earthbase Epsilon, the miner recorded that they intended to resume drilling the next day. After that last broadcast, communication stopped. The colony managers, safe in their homes on Epsilon attempted many times to re-initiate communication, but to no avail.

A proposed rescue mission is still being discussed in committee and to the outside world, the mining company reports that everything is normal, just some routine communication bugs.

Meanwhile, the radio silence continues, but all is not silent on the Midnight Isle. There is clicking and scratching inside the walls and floors, distant echoes in the halls, and the electronic hum of a station still at full power. But absent are the sounds of the miners, and everywhere are the signs of distress and danger. Meals left abandoned covered in mold and dust. Chairs and tables stacked, as if in barricades, and most worrying of all, the smears of blood in the halls and pooled on the floors, absent of bodies, but full of unanswered questions.

And now, six months after the strange mineral was discovered, there are doors opening and strangers are arriving.