Tympans of Temples Held

December 30th, 1958

She found the manifest of the Little Sisters Orphanage in Hedone Plaza. The date was stamped the tenth of August, five days before Elizabeth arrived in the city. Cohen had kept photographs of the children, stapled them next to the names. She perused the bottom of the list, skipping to the girls who had gone missing by the time Frank Fontaine contracted out to her: Mascha, Leta, Eleanor... Sally...

Elizabeth checked the manifest against the register Augustus Sinclair had provided; Sally's name was glaringly absent. She wasn't listed amongst Gilbert Alexander's test subjects either. The girl had never reached Point Prometheus.

Elizabeth put the old manifest aside and opened another drawer. She found a newer list of names, the latest Little Sisters converted at Optimized Eugenics. The date stamp was the twentieth of November, two days before Ryan sunk Fontaine's Department Store to the bottom of an ocean trench. And in his scrawled shorthand, Sander Cohen had penciled an extra name in the margins adjacent to the typed register.

Sally... at Sir Prize

Elizabeth sighed. She leant back in the chair and pinched the bridge of her nose. Somehow, Cohen had gotten ahold of Sally. Found her at Sir Prize, the casino in Poseidon Plaza, Cohen's home turf. Martin Finnegan or Hector Rodriguez had probably tipped him off. Even though the girl's mysterious benefactor had successfully spirited her away from Fontaine and Alexander, Cohen had managed to steal her back... and had had her converted into a Little Sister.

At least, Elizabeth thought miserably, Sally wasn't in the hands of someone like Daniel Wales. Then Elizabeth thought of those girls, with their glassy eyes and disjointed, haunting nursery rhymes, wandering barefoot and dirty through the streets of Rapture, accompanied by their golemesque companions, and she wondered if conversion really was preferable to the alternatives.

A crash outside the projection booth caught Elizabeth's attention. At first, she thought one of Cohen's disciples was going to break in and discover her, and she didn't think Silas Cobb and company would take too kindly to her rifling through their employer's private belongings. She picked up one of the audio diaries, prepared to throw it at someone's head and dive through the door...

Elizabeth was almost relieved to hear the shouting coming from the Fleet Hall, far below the projection booth. She stuck her head out of the window. The show that night was standing room only; the theater hall was packed with patrons, all clamoring to hear Cohen's new album. Those without seats languished in the aisles. But someone was pushing through the crowd, trying to make his way towards the stage, where Cohen was still singing, even though the pit band had gone quiet. There were murmurs of confusion from the stage managers, while people in the audience began to shout. Cohen, finally, finished a protracted cantata and glared indignantly at the source of the interruption.

"WATCH YOURSELF, YOU CLUMSY SOW!" Cohen thundered, "THIS IS MY WORK!"

Elizabeth strained to hear the response of the man pushing through the audience. Behind the glare of the stage lights, his features were hard to distinguish. He was tall, and quite strong; most members of the audience were easily pushed aside. When the man reached the stage, the microphones picked up the tail ends of his slurred, drunken garble:

"I'm not... letting you... take her, Cohen, no... no I ain't gonna... let you take her..."

Cohen clearly recognized the man... as did several members of Ryan security. The man managed to lift himself partway onto the stage, until he was hanging on his elbows. He was so drunk that he could barely keep his head up. Cohen smiled, and put one spat on the man's forehead. Somehow, Elizabeth heard the maestro from across the Fleet Hall: