Okay, here's the dealio. I just finished playing Bioshock 1 and 2, lame, I know. AND! At two a.m. in the morning, this slithers into my head. Tell me what you think, kay? Cool. I don't own Bioshock unfortunately.

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Click tap, Click tap, Click tap. The repeated process was becoming nauseating, that measly piece of plastic that held the entire package together was refusing to come apart. "You're more trouble than you're worth." I mused in a low, frustrated voice, sliding a black painted fingernail under the rebel plastic, tearing it off with one fierce slash. On the front cover in ironically sparkling letters was 'Bioshock 2'. I eyed it with a morbid fascination before cracking the case open and popping out the CD with care.

Excuse me, my name is Mackenzie Dawn, I'm twenty one years old and I'm as awkward as awkward can be… and this is my story.

It was a Saturday like any other, hectic, but peaceful at the same time. With a silvery disk positioned safely within the workings of my fingers, I pushed the game into the PS3. Only recently had I finished Bioshock one and in no way was I missing out on the second one. Conveniently, I'd received it for Christmas.

Describe myself? I know, twenty-one, I should be out party-ing and raising the roof as one would call it. In all honesty, I prefer time to myself. No, I'm not a shut in. Believe it or not, everyone has their, for lack of a better word, days. I'd like to believe I'm a realistic person. What I mean is, as much as a person would think that in a dire situation, they'd stand up for what they believe in and fight, I feel I'd actually hang back and let things play out. Call me a coward if you'd like, but most people I know can never 'walk the walk'.

Controller gripped tightly in my hands, I went through the process; menu, start, difficulty level, etc. "Better graphics I s'pose." The groggy edge in my voice was most likely because I'd just woken up from a nap and crawled half alive to the unopened game box. I squinted, rubbing my eyes. Perhaps it might have been a good idea to rid my eyes of the excessive rheum.

"Now take off your helmet."

Damn it, I was missing a good scene; I had to be, why didn't I just get up and splash some cold, yet refreshing water on my face? Stubbornness? The reluctance to press the start button that would completely pause the game? Or maybe… the honest truth that I couldn't move. My eyes were glued to the screen, every fiber of me felt connected in some way to the events unraveling before my dark eyes.

"Put the gun next to your head."

I remember it quickly becoming like a dream, those parts where you suddenly zoom out, realize you're trapped in a dream and fight between reality and fantasy, in a binding state of paralysis. As one would have done in a state of paralysis, I shook my body, wondering if I had even woken up from that wondrous nap.

"Pull the trigger."

It was amazing that I still knew what was going on in the game; subject Delta was being torn away from his little girl, a confusing notion seeing the story from a different side. I knew I could get attached to games easily, but this was getting highly ridiculous.

'BANG'

Delta's world went immediately to hell, blurring any images that might have burned in his mind the last few seconds. At that point, I remembered wondering, 'What exactly does a Big Daddy look like under his head gear?' Unfortunately, at the exact same time the screen went black, so did my world.

I don't recall the exact time I woke up, but, at that time, I knew it had to be at night. Of all the things that were wrong, the first I noticed was that my back hurt like a mother-effer. The controller was now gone from my dirty hands and somehow, I didn't even notice that my hands weren't supposed to be dirty. The first and most logical thought to blossom in my head was that I'd been kidnapped and about to be chopped into bits and sold by the pound. My mother often filled my head with these ideas when I was little, to scare me from ever going out to much with my friends or trying anything much too risky. Heart rate rising, my brown eyes bulged to incomprehensible sizes as I pushed my body downwards hoping desperately to sink into the ground and appear in my dorm. All I had to do now was wait for the three burly men with chainsaws, in hockey masks, to come and hack me apart. I heard myself sniff pitifully.

That horrendous jabbing in my back turned out to be broken train tracks. Odd, for when I finally stood up on those shaky sticks I actually called legs, I seemed to be in some kind of amusement park. "Abandoned amusement park." Perfect scene for a horror movie to begin. Suddenly, in the distance, I heard a voice, not exactly god-sent, but a voice nonetheless. Blindly, I stumbled towards it, as weary as I was confused. There was a man sitting complacently in a chair, legs crossed, facial features shrouded by darkness. Finally, I tripped on the wooden platform he was placed on. A very thin light from an overhead makeshift lantern beamed onto his plastic nose. Again, I stumbled back, disappointed and even more perplexed at the mechanical puppet. Frowning, I decided to follow the tracks, finding along the way more and more mechanical puppets and tripping more than once on crushed and broken crates. I didn't like this one bit, if someone was playing a joke on me, they would've jumped out at this point, but, yet…nothing.

Being paranoid, I'm pretty known for doing that, I think I picked it up from my relatives, every last one of us is paranoid. Sometimes it comes in handy, like the crowbar clenched tightly within my fingers, yeah, that's from my paranoia. I couldn't have cared less if it was my grandmother, I would've beat the living daylights out of her with that crowbar. Brave soul, aren't I?

"Annie? Is that you?" What do you know? It might have actually been my grandmother. A relaxed and brought my alert senses down a notch. "Where are you?" It didn't take a genius to know that there was something very wrong with that voice; the raspy quality, the dripping fake honey that was coating it. My crowbar was back up; my eyes were like little hummingbirds flitting left, right, up, down. I had half a mind to kneel in the fake shrubbery on the ground.

Then, I saw it.

A woman, definitely a woman, but… no longer a woman. The top half of her face was shielded by a mask, but the rest of her face was enough for my crowbar to drop from my fingers and clang to the ground. I think I also shrieked then, loudly too. Dry and fresh blood coated her grey flesh, dripping steadily from her pointed chin. A grand total of four teeth were missing and the rest were permanently yellow.

"Ah." Best response of the year, I know. The woman whipped her, surprisingly well-kept, blonde hair to peer at me through the masquerade mask. "UH." Weird how I could take in her casual pink dress, torn and dirtied beyond repair, and white purse still dangling from her right arm, but didn't have the sense to bend down and pick up my only weapon. I didn't quite process it then, but she looked almost… happy to see me, but I sure as hell wasn't happy to see her.

"Hello sweetie." Her screechy voice clawed dangerously at my ears. The pearls around her neck swung, her attire suggested that if there was a shred of human in her, she was trying to hold on to it. What was I to do? Bravely bring her down with my crowbar…hell no. I turned tail and ran like a sissy, and frankly, I don't regret it. "Come back!" she shrieked in anger, adding an undertone of a growl. No way , no how was I going back, I sprinted as fast as possible, desperate to get away from the taunting mechanical dummies and that… thing. "Get your ass back here!" Fading! Her voice was fading! "You can't hide forever!" Those four words were enough to chill my bones to a point where if you poked me, I'd just crumble apart.

"I can try." Faster, I ran faster, as fast as my leg muscles could allow, which wasn't too fast. I'm not a freaking athlete. Mustering as much courage as I could bear, a glance was cast over my shoulder. My pace didn't slow, which, unfortunately for me, slammed me face first into a glass wall. From the force at which I was running, my body bounced back with amazing distance. On the cold floor, I sat dazed for the next several moments until everything hit me in a single flash. "Oh my God." Still shaking, on my hands and knees, I began crawling to the glass I'd collided with earlier. My warm auburn hair had slipped from its bun and I was in no mood to tie it back. A horrible knot formed in the middle of my stomach as I pressed my hands against the glass, leaning on it to pull myself up, quaking more than ever before.

My face re-molded itself into one of pure shock and disbelief at what lay beyond the glass barrier. I tried to stop my lower lip from quivering, but that was kind of hard, considering that I was somewhere beneath the goddamn ocean! Fisting my hands on the glass, a new layer of cold encased my body in an unforgiving layer of fear. It was impossible and would take more than forever to process in my brain, but by some inconceivable means… I'd ended up in the so-called utopia, where no other powers exist other than man. The very world Andrew Ryan strove to create; ruined and betrayed by whom he considered 'the weak'. I was in the vast underwater city of Rapture.

I think I fainted then.

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Thanks for reading.