They'd reached a stalemate.

Should Atlas decide to make good on frying Fontaine's mind that was it. Game over, but the double himself could not seem to be killed. Any damage Fontaine might have dished out was gone within mere moments. It would seem he'd lost before the fight even really started – but Atlas had his own limitations.

He was not in control of the body.

Not for lack of trying of course. Fontaine had nearly felt his soul part from his body the first time Atlas tried to forcibly slip inside his skin. The resulting experience excruciating for both parties, leaving both man breathless and shaking from the waves of pain that rolled through them.

"You…" Frank gasped, struggling to breath as the shockwaves of pain gradually receded. "You are a fucking maniac."

"Could say the same for you." Atlas tossed right back, eyeing the now empty bottles that had once contained plasmids as he braced himself against the wall by their side. "Not that you were ever the bleeding picture of sanity."

There had been no answering rebuttal for that. Frank attributed it to his focus being exclusively on not throwing up after that experience.

This little set up of theirs did not come with an instruction manual unfortunately. As such neither he nor Atlas could garner the upper hand and were forced to simply exist within the same living space until one of them came up with a brilliant new way to best the other.

Atlas had not entirely given up the exercise of attempting to take over but had for the time being stepped back, taking time to think and find another way to gain control.

Every second Fontaine spent feeling that lie's existence at his back was another second he vowed to spend grinding the kids face into the pavement.

The only thing both he and the parasite seemed to agree on was the importance of the screens.

Jack had made quite good time all things considered.

Had he not been stuck dealing with his little problem of dualism then he would have head down there to block the kid's path himself but instead had to settle for cutting him off at Point Prometheus.

Atlas had kicked up an almighty fuss when Mother Goose announced her plan to have the boy make a greater monster of himself than he already was. Fontaine echoed his protests with a sneer, a one-way street he'd reminded and watched as Atlas seethed. All that apprehension and rage melding together into some wretchedly genuine feeling of concern for the brat and the little monsters he was collecting.

Fontaine himself had his own fears and frustrations – none of it stemmed from concern for the kid so much as of the kid. He was getting closer and just as it had always been it seemed there was absolutely no force in Rapture that could impede him.

All these little doubts and uncertainties manifested themselves it seemed inside of the lie.

They'd briefly lost sight of Jack. The kid had just gotten through with making himself reek half as bad as those tin daddies and moved onto looking for a helmet and gloves to finish the ghoulish outfit when the cameras lost him. Fontaine made no great efforts to relocate him, having already decided it was time to move locations. The kid was coming to the pinnacle of Rapture. A place where even the sunlight could reach if the conditions were just right. Frankie knew that Ryan had been able to see the sun up here at times and wondered if he shunned the surface right to the very end. Likely, the stubborn old bastard.

As Fontaine strode unimpeded into the highest point of Rapture he was greeted with the funneling system that Suchong had rigged up all that time ago. It was supposedly safe enough and would push all of the ADAM he desired straight into his blood stream but with the ghost of the con lingering at his back Fontaine ignored it for the time being. He could feel the crackle of lightening under his fingertips, ice along the lines of his veins and heat boiling away in his chest – he'd manage with just this.

But he could still feel the kid chasing at his heels and the pressure was beginning to make his head pound. So much so that he ended up glancing the monstrous design more than he ought to for a man with no intent to use it.

To make matters worse the fake was not silent in the way it existed. Fontaine could hear its footsteps echoing behind him, predatory and assured in each footfall. The way he'd walked when the lie still landed over his own name as a truth.

Once the kid was dealt with he could properly turn his attention onto destroying whatever it was that those crackpot scientists had managed to create inside of his skull.

Then his attention was grabbed away from the ADAM Inducer Device, attention dragged back to the kid's progress. Wouldn't have even recognized him were it not for that decidedly meddlesome way he moved. So unlike the aimless meandering wander of a true big daddy. He'd completed his little charade and Fontaine's brief time of silence broke, with it came an onslaught of angry words. That was all he had left for the boy, no more sweet lies or little promises of freedom – just this unadulterated cruelty.

"Where you gonna go?" He demanded of his silent listener. "Your life? Your family? They're a fairy tale, kid. No more real than something you read about in the Saturday Evening Post. Poor bastard. A motherless freak whipped up in a half-baked science experiment." And as he'd long since given up getting a rise out of Jack he immediately tossed the radio aside in one of his many moments of rage.

Why was he so bleedingly quiet? He thought again. Why did he never shout back all the accusations and denunciations he no doubt had rattling around that farm boy written brain of his?

This silent treatment – Frank thought again – was insufferable.

"Starting to show your cracks, huh Fontaine?"

He wished he could have claimed to forget about the specter's presence, wished he had been able to since it spawned in front of him for the very first time. But as it was he'd simply let that moment of anger overrule his higher reasoning. He was a man who lived his life as a lie – performance was not something he lacked finesse in, but it was difficult to conjure up an act in front of the thing that was not even a man. Just some wretched illusion ADAM had saddled him with.

And yet he turned on it as he would have any living person, spiteful and vicious as he could manage bar putting another bullet in him – it'd be a waste of ammunition. "And just for you I'll take some special care when I round up Mother Goose and her brood." Atlas's familiar eyes turned colder and his expression wasn't a mocking one anymore. In turn Fontaine began to smirk. "Must be maddening, being completely and utterly useless. Not even real – just some forgotten relic."

Just as Fontaine had felt that the matter was settled, Atlas rightly reminded of his standing in the world or lack there of – the relic spoke again.

"And where are you going to go?"

It was not the question he'd thrown at Jack only moments earlier being hurled right back at him that gave Frank a moment of pause. Rather it was the knowing way Atlas said it. Cold and knowing, as though he really could see right through every part of Fontaine.

It occurred to him now that perhaps this lie knew his real name. The only other person left on earth who might.

Just as the retort was bubbling up Atlas went on, they both knew that words had always been Frank's weapon of choice. Why fight himself when he could talk someone into submission or convince them to turn the gun on themselves? Hard labour was not in his nature as it had been Atlas's. "Your life? Your family?" Atlas rattled off the words with a careless flick of his wrist followed up by a dry, pitiless smirk. "You don't happen to own either – best you had were about as real as the kid's were."

The shine in Atlas's eye seemed to Fontaine to be too similar to his creator, but he supposed that was to be expected. Atlas might have been an actor himself had he been real – that wholesome revolutionary image couldn't be real even if Atlas was. After all he was a revolutionary that bore the blood of children on his hands readily. The difference between he and Fontaine – in its cruelest and purest form was intent.

"Your life. Which of your lives can you hide behind now, Fontaine? Even that lie is expiring soon and all you got left is 'Frank'." There was a short pause and Fontaine knew exactly what had crossed the thing's mind in the way the cold upward curl on its lips stretched into a shark like grin. "Your family. Well now there's not much left of that is there, Frankie?"

And just as before Frank snapped at the thing on this point. The bark of "Shut the fuck up!" Did nothing to silence it and Fontaine was reaching for his gun before his higher reasoning to chime in and remind him of the futility unloading a few bullets into the thing would bring.

Two rapid shots of the gun silenced it for a moment, just as its mouth had opened to speak what would no doubt have been condemning words. Damn it he knew. He knew already so shut up.

The first of the bullets took the thing by the shoulder, throwing its whole body back as the second blew a hole in the left side of Atlas's image. Just as the first time, the thing's body fell to the floor seemingly dead and Fontaine took those precious seconds of silence to try and recompose himself.

This thing seemed hand crafted by not only himself but some perversion of justice. He did not give the concept of god the time of day but now knew that if such an entity existed they were a cruel, unjust creature that allowed men like himself to do all they did only to then turn it's jeering onto them when all the innocents were spent and gone. The thing inside of his head spoke of things he'd rather forget, its existence alone was a plight he did not know he could survive through.

Trickling on by the seconds felt like small eternities and when Fontaine looked down at the body that would be returning before long he saw the insides of the thing. It looked human enough, skin peeled back from its skull, blood sprayed out across the floor from where it had hit and continuing to leak and drip to the ground. Slow, so slow, as it had no heartbeat even as its mouth continued to move.

Then slowly the eye not left damaged by the bullet fluttered open and the fake revolutionary dog began to ease himself upright. Frank watched it press a hand to his ruined face and pull it back to look at the blood staining its hand only to laugh with shredded lips. Gurgling and coughing as the sound tore out of it before the thing's image could knit itself back together.

Gradually, at its own pace as though time itself was no restraint of its, the thing looked up at its creator and Frank for a split second wondered if it saw the same pitiless god that he envisioned inside of its unwilling creator. With that ruined mouth the creature spoke again.

"It's strange, don't you think?" It asked, a judgment dressed up like an enquiry. I know they never existed. I know that. Never had a family to lose me – hurts like a right bitch knowing that. But you…ha you had family to lose."

Atlas's one eye and the void where the left had been stared into Frank, his sneer spoke of mocking but those eyes were not. They were some awestruck, miserable look – as though Fontaine's existence was an inexcusable, unexplainable error. "And you don't feel a bleedin' thing."

Then as though it knew just which words to pick to cement every syllable into Frank's memory it smiled through that broken face in a way that was almost pitying and echoed an old lie back at him.

"Can you imagine a bigger fool than that?"

He did not need to see the thing as it's face stitched itself back together, not leaving so much as a blemish from his outburst behind. Frank turned away and walked as though there were really anyway to distance himself from the parasite that had taken up residency inside of his thoughts. He knew it was there until he could find a way to cut it out like a tumor, useless yet damaging until removed.

His thoughts turned briefly back to Jack. The distant squish of the thing's flesh weaving itself back into one piece echoing behind him.

Wearily his gaze turned to the discarded radio and then without another thought he went to retrieve it. The little box had fallen in front of the Inducer Device and that was where Fontaine's gaze lingered as he spoke into the worn box. It had survived through more than one outburst from its owner and had managed to endure this one as well.

When he spoke it was with the usual derisive drawl. To an outsider, to Jack, it likely sounded the same as all the other hecklings as Fontaine's mocking words came crawling through the airwaves. "That's it, kid." He began. "It's been a long road. You don't even remember most of it. Put you on a sub when you were just a sprout." That was not much of a threat, nor was it much of a taunt and Frank wondered why this was the first thing he'd thought to say.

He followed it up nearly immediately with something cruel. As though this moment of showmanship would somehow wash away the one before it. This one he said because he knew the thing behind him putting its face back together was listening. Always listening.

"I really wound you up with that wife and child bit: "Oh, me poor Moira. Ah, me wee baby Patrick." Maybe one day I'll get me a real family. They play well with the suckers."

A mistake. Frank realised as he lowered the radio and could practically feel Atlas's eyes on him. Both now, it regenerated quickly.

He could feel it's judgment before the words began and there was very little he could do to keep it quiet bar putting more holes into it. A time and bullet waster ultimately. So he had no choice but to suffer its words.

"You know better than anyone the best lies are made from twisted truths. You think I didn't hear that duality?" It asked and Frank could imagine its expression of ridicule with agonizing clarity. "You can't lie to me Fontaine; I've been in your head. You think I didn't notice?"

Then a shift. "My Moira…" The cruelty faded and there was a second of tenderness in the delusion's voice.

"Well she might be a pretty fantasy but there was a truth behind her. I watched that truth die." It was affection there, truer and more potent than Fontaine's lies had ever been able to capture. He thought it almost sad that this thing loved a woman it never really knew as deeply and wholly as it did. That it - a thing that was just as much a fabrication as she had been – could muster up that sort of devotion and affection where Fontaine did not.

"Amazing – you managed to kill her twice."

Three times this would make it.

Three times Frank's temper got the best of him and he turned on the thing inside of him. On the third it was with angry words that tore out of some deep, vicious part of him and Fontaine had not intended to let fester for so many years. "You want to sit there and play the part of the couch doctor, huh?" He demanded, voice rising into a shout as he whirled on the other man who had only just righted himself, any traces of the prior injury wiped away as the illusion set itself back to a default setting. "You want to play mind games for a while? That what you goddamn want, Atlas? Well go right ahead because incase it has escaped your notice – there's not a damn thing you can say or do that changes anything!"

They were playing by his rules. They were all dancing to his tune now.

"This here is my city, this is my showground now and you ain't got a card left to play. Barely had one to play in the first place."

His arena, his level – his stage.

"So go ahead you two-bit con! Talk away, pick at my open wounds, pull at whatever loose threads you can find floating around in my head – it won't change a damn thing when you and the boy are dead as dust!"

You're quite the little showman, Frankie.

"Don't you get it?" He asked, able to feel the muscles in his face twisting into some feral variation of a widened smirk. Manic energy bubbling under his flesh as he spoke. Anything to kill its voice. "There's nothing you or he can do to stop me!"

With one arm thrown out across his body Fontaine gestured to the point all the ADAM in Rapture would race to on his command. The ultimate final step, the thing that would put both Jack and this Irish lie into the ground. Buried and forgotten once he was finished with them just the way it always should have been.

It was not with a smile or a glare that Atlas regarded him now.

Just a flat, leveled look that somehow managed to strike through him more cleanly than any snarl or shouted word could have. He was just…staring at Frank, as though there was some great tragedy he couldn't see. As though there was something so obvious that only he failed to see that everyone else understood.

In a heartbeat it was all to much, everything had piled too high and Frank could only see that look that his façade gave him.

He could only think the silence that was so loud from his kid.

Frankie could only remember how both had been given to him before from people long gone and the pressure was only building higher. Something had to give, something had to change and Fontaine wasn't going to let it be himself.

He was a man who lived with his lies close to his person. So much so that beyond them there was not much of a person to speak of. There were a few core things he could always use to ground himself so as not to fall too far into an act – those things no loner existed. All he had now was this knowledge that he must be the one to come out on top, he must be the one to win. If he didn't see this to the end, what was the point of all he'd done to come to this point?

Frank would need a new lie before long. Otherwise what was he left with?

He'd, for a time, truly been Atlas. Just as he'd been Fontaine, and Gorland, Moskowitz, Peterson, Barris, Blair, Lytle—

Revolutionary, Tycoon, Bar Keep, Mobster, Bookkeeper, Liar, Conman, little brother—

"I am going to take the kid apart right in front of you Atlas. And oh let me tell you, it's real disappointing you're not actually alive so I could give you the same treatment. Guess once this is over I'll have all the time in the world to see just how much that fake body of yours can recover from – I'll have bullets to spare."

It was with that single-minded determination that Frank turned for the machine, fully intending to plug himself in and soak up every last drop of ADAM the city had to offer. He would not let his boy kill him here.

But he was barely at the top of the platform when he heard those previously steady footfalls racing up behind him, having broken into a dead sprint each pound of the heavy boots against the surface of the machine seeming to vibrate through the metal as Atlas lunged for him.

He heard the illusion shout his name as he did and for just a second process it as his actual name – it sounded so rusty in his own head that for a moment he failed to recognize it.

Then Atlas's fingers were at his wrist and that pain they'd felt wash over them the last time Atlas attempted to push Fontaine aside for control returned. Twice as excruciating and yet Atlas did not let go even as both men screamed. Instead those fingers bit in more roughly and he pulled Frank towards him, grabbing onto his shoulder with the other hand. From that contact more pain exploded through his body and those screams became desperate, animalistic howls with human speech littered between them. Curses, threats even the occasional plea to be released pulling itself out of Frank as he tried in vain to tug away from the illusion that was far too solid a creature.

And through the agony and the screaming Atlas's voice rung out. It might have been the creature speaking, it might have been some wretched voiceless connection that gave language to its intent inside his skull, it didn't matter the words came through clearly. "You're going to fucking get us both killed!" Atlas snarled and Frank's mind might have reflected he'd once accused the man of the same exact thing were it not so fully of static in that moment. Static and that Irish growl. "For god's sake! Can't you for just once in your miserable life stop being so cowardly!?"

On that final word it all stopped.

For a second Fontaine felt nothing at all. The pain all stopped but so did everything else. Numb and nothing, he lost even the sensation of the delusions fingers at his wrist and then he was falling.

The world ripped itself out from under him and Frank fell back not realising until he hit the ground below the machine's podium that his body had remained standing there.

It took him all of three seconds to comprehend what had happened.

"No." He gasped, forcing the words out even though there was no sensation coursing through him and every breath event uneven as it pulled into his lungs, leaving every word weak and airy as he struggled for them. "No, get out. Get out of my body."

Atlas stood in Fontaine's body, turning his own hands over in amazement, simply flexing those fingers that did not belong to him before finally facing the rightful owner who was just as much an illusion as he'd been minutes prior. The awe died away and Atlas straightened out that borrowed spine, adopting a look of determination. "Setting things straight." He repeated the first words Frank had ever heard him say. "Just as promised."

Horror tore through Frank as he tried to stumble back to his feet but found moving to be difficult. Nothing felt right, it was all too light and it seemed the level of force he needed to exert just to stand was immense. Atlas looked at him once more with that knowing stare and it was clear to Frank that he'd felt just the same in this condition with only more time to learn how to adjust to it. But it was a fleeting glance and a second later the imposter had started to move. Deliberately carrying their body away from that machine although Fontaine tried to scream in protest. Finding it more and more difficult to make a sound.

"Soon the kid will be here and he'll kill us." Atlas informed him as he slowly descended from the machine. "Those girls will get to the surface and Rapture will be entirely forgotten by them. It's saddening to know there are others down here still sane enough to try and escape, but at least the people we've wronged will make it back to the surface."

Again he tried to speak, to curse at Atlas or to beg frenziedly for his body back it was unclear but still his words failed him. Atlas easily filled in the empty air. "For a moment there Fontaine I really thought I might have misjudged you. But I was right in my first assessment. Perhaps the only good parts of you in those moments you showed humanity to family were all me. Without them you're barely human. What are you now Frank?"

Atlas stopped at his side for a moment and the man did not look up to see if it was a pitying look he cast the useless man now. "For a man such as yourself this ought to be a rather painful experience." He remarked calmly. "Doing the right thing."

With that the fake in his skin walked forward towards the elevator. Preparing to meet what would be their death wearing the face of a kid who'd known them all his life and somehow not known either of them truly. Knowing Atlas, as he was now, the man likely planned to greet the kid with a smile as he accepted their death and fulfilled that promise he'd somehow come to hold so dear to him.

Then the elevator was moving, both he and Atlas heard it and while Frank's reaction was a stone cold dread coiling in his stomach, Atlas's was to smile tiredly and reach for the radio and speak with Fontaine's voice as though it were his since birth. The irony of this was lost on Frank in that moment.

"I remember when me and the Kraut put you in that sub." He recalled, perfectly capturing Fontaine's scorn in his tone but the words were alarmingly nostalgic in a way that Frank just could not ignore.

"You were… no more than two." Atlas mused, wearing a smile that the kid would likely never see as he filed through Frank's own memories as though they were his own.

Perhaps they were in a way.

Then with his gaze turned to the ceiling where he could pretend to see the sun for a moment Atlas continued the charade a little longer. "You were my ace in the hole, but you were also the closest thing I ever had to a son."

Atlas cringed and Frank swore he could hear Patrick's name floating across his mind. Two sons he'd never really had but loved dearly all the same. Then he reconciled with the things he could not, never had and would never have in a matter of seconds, his pained gaze becoming a bitter sweet smile.

As if to say this is enough, I am contented with this and I could not be prouder of you still.

But what he spoke in its place was a kind lie rather than a unkind truth.

"And that's why this hurts." With those words gaze slipping back over to Frank who sat, silent and staring in his horror at the man who was marking their own great. "Betrayal, kid."

Atlas spoke into the radio but Frank knew his focus was not the kid on the other end.

"Life ain't strictly business."

The radio went dead and the elevator arrived mere moments later. Fontaine always knew he was mortal but never thought he'd see his own death play out in front of his eyes. Atlas turned towards the elevator, hands on his hips looking every bit the old revolutionary mutt he'd been crafted as for those few seconds between this moment and their punishment.

What Fontaine saw when that door opened was a bright blue spark and nothing else.