Tympans of Temples Held

September 12th, 1958

Audio Transcript – 'Answers'

[I'm a fool. I'm blind, and I'm a fool. It's just as the Luteces have always said, Booker, the answers are always dependent upon the angle of one's perspective. I just needed to look! Cohen's museum tickets... 'A little outing,' he said, but the museum at Point Prometheus has been turned into a proving ground for Dr. Alexander's Protectors, the same Protectors spliced from the inmates of the penal colony owned by Sinclair! And if Cohen's agents are the ones visiting the orphanages, then Fontaine's people have no reason to suspect the treachery. Cohen has an affiliation with Andrew Ryan, that's true, but he has no stake in the plasmid industry. It's a perfect deception: the only man able to steal the Little Sisters is the man who doesn't need them.]

Kyle Fitzpatrick shifted his weight from foot to foot impatiently. "Elizabeth, I don't think anyone is going to answer that phone."

Elizabeth sighed. She had forwarded a message to Frank Fontaine via the pnuemo line early that morning, outlining her conversation with Wildemar Noble and what little she knew of Cohen's child trafficking racket. She included a time she would be available for a telephone call. But not only had Fontaine failed to acknowledge the message, the operator had informed Elizabeth several times that the line to Fontaine's Department Store and to Fontaine Futuristics had been completely severed. For some inexplicable reason, Frank Fontaine was in a communications blackout.

"He'll pick up," she murmured, not quite believing it herself.

Fitzpatrick knitted his eyebrows. "I thought you said you were using my call card to phone your aunt?"

"She'll pick up."

"Elizabeth..."

The connection clicked, and the line went dead. Elizabeth slammed the phone on its cradle. The backstage attendants all jumped. Fitzpatrick took a wary step back.

Frank Fontaine had spies all over Rapture. In all likelihood, one of them had overheard her conversation with Mr. Noble at the Fighting McDonagh's the previous evening. If Elizabeth had uncovered anything connected to the missing Little Sisters, she anticipated Fontaine being the first to know about it. His silence was bewildering.

Every time Elizabeth thought she was one step ahead of the city and its intrigues, she stumbled. Even with the Doors, she felt blind, jumping from one disjointed fragment of the truth to the next. The light was fading, and the path was receding beneath the shadows. And this time, Elizabeth didn't believe the interference was her employer's doing. He was not a man easily silenced, and the prospect of dealing with someone formidable enough to muzzle Fontaine gave Elizabeth significant pause for thought.

"You have a performance in five minutes," Fitzpatrick reminded her. "You made last night's show by the skin of your teeth. Another close call like that and Sander will be displeased."

"Displeased might be too pretty a term."

"My point exactly. Curtain call in five."

Elizabeth brushed a few errant strands of lint from her crimson dress. When she looked at herself in the mirror, the bright-eyed girl from Monument Island wasn't the one looking back at her. There were new lines creasing the corners of her mouth. Her blue eyes looked murky and tired. She felt thin, like a paper person creased and worn at the edges. Elizabeth wondered what Booker would think if he could see her now.

Elizabeth turned away from the mirror. Booker wouldn't think anything. Booker DeWitt was dead, and the dead forfeited their right to any opinion of the living.