A Friend to the Parasite [Bioshock]

[Kawamura]

His mother had always said that when the world goes to shit, keep up a hobby.

Eoin kept plants, and by God, he kept them well. His little garden down in his lab-turned-home was sort of like a barometer for the condition of the world, an inverse relation between the beauty and majesty of those little ordered plants (all named and numbered, of course, in his tiny, neat writing) and the hell the outside world had become. The more work Frank had him do, the better he took care of the plants.

Sometimes he mixed the two, work and home: people made a fantastic mulch.

Tending his plants gave him a sort of peace that he could only now find in what had become personal experiments. He was a geologist, but the work Frankie had him on was completely unrelated to the untrained eye. To him, it was just his subject fast forwarded: a little pressure here, the meeting of two unmovable forces, some heat, wait a bit and people, societies were just like rocks. His job was to find where to place the TNT.

He was good at that. Damned good. Sometimes, when heâ??d done particularly well, Fraâ??No, Atlas was what he went by these days, but either way, he was still the same handsome, charming man â?? sometimes he sent flowers and a little hand written note with promises, sweet words and apologies for leaving him alone. At forty-three-God-damned-years-old, he couldnâ??t help but melt like ice dropped in a hot cup of coffee. In the beginning, his lab assistants, mostly women but all aware that he was an old fruit, would tease him fondly when he tucked away a new note into his breast pocket. Theyâ??d always go out for drinks afterwards, and the lanky Irishman, prim and proper and oh so very much the professor, would buy them all a few rounds, handsome face going as red as his hair as the night went on. Theyâ??d all stumble back to their own places or, if the need arouse, to someone elseâ??s, stupid smiles on their faces as they bade each other good night.

No one smiled at him anymore. And, instead of laughter, all he ever heard was the thump-thump-thump of a wrench as some poor sod tried to get into the lab, or perhaps the long screech of one of those hooked madmen. If he did hear laughing that was even worse: the only people that managed a good guffaw these days were completely rotted out in their brains.

When he went out, he heard gunshots. No one messed with him, of course: he was Atlasâ?? man, easily recognizable since he no longer had to hide it. And if some of Ryanâ??s dogs came for him, well, he had access to more body guards than anyone other than Ryan himself. Atlas, after all, was too valuable to go out, so little olâ?? Eoin did it.

In the beginning, it had bothered him; but this was the right thing to do, right? Ryan was the one that hated charity and all, and Frank had seen the widening gap between the haves and the have nots and set out to fix it. Oh, sure, some of the methods were questionable, but wasnâ??t these days? If you could get bread in the mouths of hungry kids, what did it matter that a few two-bit wannabe mobsters ended up shot full of lead in the streets? And Frank spoke so gently to him, never called him names nor bit him with words; Eoin couldnâ??t believe half the things they said about what the man did.

No, Frank was a good sort, and once this all settled down, Rapture would be better for it.

Some days, if he spent enough time with his plants, he actually believed that lie, and that was enough to keep him jumping at the short wave radio as it crackled to life. He had to go set another charge in another crack in the unmovable wall that was Andrew Ryan. Because Eoin Griffiths knew that if you set enough and found the right spots, you could bring down any mountain.

It was just a matter of time and pressure.

 

[sevenpercentsolution]

Dr. Winston was feeling unwell.

It was the noise - he was sure that he would be fine without the noise, but it was pounding into his head in a way that made his vision pulsate and left him sitting with his face in his hands because moving made him feel sick to his stomach - it made his small, glass-encased world spin out of control. He had work to do, didn't they know that? He had work to do, and they just kept making noise, causing a racket just on the other side of the door - he'd lost track of how long it had been since he'd had peace and quiet, it might have been days or weeks, but it seemed like an eternity because they just wouldn't stop, they wouldn't leave him to his work.

He had to finish his work; people were relying on him to finish it, needed it done faster, needed it done yesterday, but he'd lost his last assistant not so long ago - he had really lost her and he had no idea where she had gone to either. It occurred to him that there used to be other people in the lab too, but they were gone as well, he just couldn't quite remember where they'd gone to, he just knew they were gone -

- but that wasn't important, what was important was finishing his work. He just needed some quiet. He just needed a little peace so he could finish up, that was all. If he could have that, then he could get it done; it was important after all.

As he walked around the stainless steel table, the heel of his boot dragged through a thick, congealing pool of blood and smeared across the otherwise pristine white floor.

-

Kevin wasn't entirely sure what to do; he didn't usually make these sorts of decisions. He hadn't even really made the decision to move to Rapture, he'd just thought it sounded nice and he'd gone because his brother would be there, but he had been a little strange lately and hadn't come around since New Years - that was nearly two weeks ago - and that meant that Kevin would have to decide what to do on his own. He picked his brain for the solution and discovered it wasn't coming easily to him because, really, this wasn't something he'd had to think about before.

He'd managed to bar his front door shut using a tea trolley, but the wild thrashing on the other side didn't seem to be dying down; it had been happening a lot lately, but they usually gave up after a few minutes - this one had kept on for nearing an hour now, and it was making him think he might actually have to do something about it.

Rapture had gone funny lately, and since New Years people had begun to act strangely - it had started off small, reports of violent attacks within the city. It happened sometimes, even in a place like Rapture, but after a day or two the reports had become more frequent until they had stopped coming altogether and now the radio would only play smooth jazz and had stopped giving any news at all. Initially, Kevin had thought this might be a good sign; maybe there was just nothing to report, but he became certain something was off around the time people had started trying to knife his door open.

They screamed, too; not a normal sort of scream either - it was a piercing shriek and usually they were talking, but it was a lot of nonsense and they kept trying to get in. Generally he would just turn up the radio and wait for them to go away like unwanted Jehovah's witnesses, and usually it worked, but this one was very persistant and Kevin was sitting on the floor in front of the tea trolley trying to figure out what he should do about it. He reached up and plucked a stale sugar cookie from the tray above him and quietly chewed on it; he didn't want to go out there - that was pretty clear.

Of course, he couldn't stay in his living room forever either - eventually he would need to leave. He'd stopped worrying about getting to work; he was sure that his excuse was a legitimate one - people were constantly trying to get into his home with sharp things. Not just one person, either, it was all different ones and it was just good carpentry that had kept them out.

There was another of those piercing shrieks and the trolley rattled against Kevin's back so hard that he peered over the edge of it and found the end of what appeared to be a glaive sticking through his door, the tip roughly an inch from his own eye. Kevin swallowed the bit of cookie as the blade was wrenched from the other side and pulled back out; over the weeks, the door had started to splinter in places, and now there was a sizeable hole that he could see through and out the other side - and he found a bloodshot eye looking back at him through it.

"Please go away." Kevin whined, leaning against the trolley as the pounding on the door began again, and the eye was gone, so he could only assume the person on the other side was throwing herself against it. Alright, maybe being polite wasn't the solution, "I really - um, if you're trying to sell something, this is honestly getting ridiculous. Do you have a manager? I might need to speak to him."

He was answered with a series of incoherent shrieks, more pounding; the door splintered,

"Look, you sound like a reasonable person," he lied loudly, trying to make himself heard over the uncontrolled screaming, "Can't we just talk this over? In fact, we don't even need to talk - you could just stop trying to knock my door down and go away, and this will be solved. I'll even deal with the damage myself - I can fix it, no problem. Really."

The pounding stopped. The noise stopped. Everything stopped except for Kevin's breathing and he stood there for a long moment, stone still, listening for anything - there was nothing. He let out a breath of relief - only slightly too soon, because then there was hammering and the sound of metal on metal. He barely had time to think because the door was suddenly gone, and all that was standing between him and the crazed woman was the flimsy cart and a tray of cookies; she was short and squat, middle-aged, dressed in a blood-stained purple frock, and her eyes were rolling around in their sockets without any real purpose.

And she was very heavy, Kevin discovered as he tried to keep her away from his throat; he didn't want to fight. He didn't want to hurt anyone.

She was strong though; too strong. He knew he should have been able to hold her off of him physically, but the power she was exerting was tremendous, and he ended up reaching for anything he could get a hold of - which turned out to be a stainless steel serving tray - and cracked her across the head with it until she stopped trying to kill him.

And unfortunately, that didn't happen until there was a lot of blood everywhere, and Kevin stood clutching the badly dented tray over his head, ready to strike again if the need arose, but it finally registered that there wasn't much left to hit.

"Oh god." he said.

This was why he didn't usually make decisions.

 

[Kawamura]

Eoin stared at the radio. He had thoughtâ?¦ It was silent, but he could have sworn he had heard something. The geologist wandered away to his office in a daze, barely registering one of the many cats heâ??d taken in when the city went insane. They were easy to feed: there was no end of healthy bodies these days, and felines were meat eaters, the damned things ate more often then he did. He floated past, pulled open a heavy, metal door, shivering from the icy air.

He had processed the meat before freezing, before rigor mortis had set in. Had even shocked the smaller hunks of corpse to keep it from getting hard: cats might not be as picky as humans, but he didnâ??t want the poor dears to break a tooth on some useless mobsterâ??s left buttock. The scientist selected a cut from a drawer labeled in the same careful, flowing script from the garden â??soleusâ??, pulled out the paper-wrapped meat and returned to his office to leave it defrost in a cool bowl of water. A low â??meowâ?? greeted him, and his handsome face brightened as he reached down to pet one of the cats that had fallen asleep on the desk, a pretty black thing with green eyes and a long tail.

This time, when the radio went off, there was honestly a voice at the other end. Not Frankâ??s; no, he only got that when he had done very well or if the job was deathly important. This was different: theyâ??d caught some of Ryanâ??s men trying to break into a lab housingâ?¦ well, Eoin didnâ??t really know. Frank was smart enough to keep his organization compartmentalized so leaks anywhere could be stopped up, very much like Rapture herself, only this time with lack of knowledge. And ignorance worked just as well as any airtight bulkhead. But Ryanâ??s men wanted something, Frank wanted it protected, so Eoin was called out. As soon as the static from the radio had died down, the redhead had gone off and found himself a half-full bottle of whiskey, poured the alcohol onto ice hacked from the same freezer he kept the meat in, and waited.

Ten minutes or ten hours later, the constant noise of insane citizens trying to get into his door grew to a cacophony then abruptly stopped, and Eoin knew his escort was at the door. He had tucked in his shirt, pulled on his suspenders and jacket and stepped out into the care of four very well armed men. Frank might barely see him these days, but he always made sure he was well cared for on these little trips out; Eoin might have chalked that up to kindness if he wasnâ??t a sensible man. After all, he was Atlasâ?? man, through and through, his useful lap dog. Perhaps he should have gone for more than half a bottle.

The trip was a whirl of noise and blood, something Eoin had learned to ignore so he could function. He was a shy thing, unused to loud noises and lots of people, and the stress was just a little too much. Better that he let his bodyguards deal with the random assortment of splicers and desperate men that jumped out at them, that waited to ambush and found quick death at the business end of a shotgun. Eoin himself had a pistol tucked away under his jacket, but that was a last resort.

Besides, there wasnâ??t much in this city worth seeing these days; he hadnâ??t come to Rapture because he wanted to watch babes strangled in their cribs. Itâ??d only been a fortnight since the world fell apart, and already the lower class folks were feeling the pangs of interrupted ADAM. One ugly night, he had watched a pack of what used to be human beings tear into a small family, Ma, Da, and the wee one, a family that had probably just been trying to flee to higher ground. Not that there was anywhere to flee: Ryan had as good as murdered them, sealing them up in this little underwater Bedlam. He had nearly drunk himself to death after that episode, and maybe Frank had given him time to recover, or maybe he simply hadnâ??t heard the radio. He had yelled an awful lot, then, he remembered, so much the plants seemed to tremble (though, logically, that was probably the alcohol) because they had known this would happen. Or maybe it had just been him. Ryan would rather everyone go down with the ship than let that ship go to Fontaine. Eoin was still finding glass from the things he broke that session.

This evening would be easier. The only thing theyâ??d see kill tonight would be some of Ryanâ??s grunts: people that werenâ??t really people these days, with melting features and brains with more holes in them than a sponge. Eoin didnâ??t see that as killing so much as putting down; it was an act of mercy. â??Griffiths, sir?â? A voice in a thick, Bronx accent pulled him from his thoughts, and Eoin smiled. The guy that was talking was big, almost Big Daddy big and carried around a giant gun that Eoin figured weighed as much as his own mother, God rest her soul. He had a big, stupid face that looked like it had been formed out of mud that hadnâ??t had the time to dry before itâ??d been pulled out of the mold, skin sagging over a rough, angular frame. â??They says they got the two in there, sir. You best to be gettinâ?? in.â? Eoin doffed his head and stepped past into the warehouse, one of Fontaineâ??s old fisheries. The walls were thick here, making it a good place for putting dogs down.

The two men were tied to chairs that looked like they had been wheeled out of someoneâ??s office, more brutes with arms as big as Eoinâ??s waist were waiting, along with a clever, weasel of a man. It was him he addressed. â??Have they spoken, Mr. Evans?â? The redhead pulled his fedora off, followed by his suit jacket.

â??No, Mr. Griffiths.â? The man had a voice like oil and every time they spoke Eoin felt dirty for it, like he had to go home and wash. Eoin responded with a soft grunt in the affirmative, dropping off his jacket on the table, next to the empty bottles and the ashtray. â??We figured youâ??d wanna be here. Itâ??s about that doctor.â?

Evans pulled away as Eoin turned, examining the prisoners. Theyâ??d spliced too much and with the drop in ADAM lately, well, they were suffering for it. But they were both still sane, two pairs of lopsided eyes stared up at him. â??Good evening, gentleman,â? he started politely, Irish accent smooth and calming.

Or it should have been. One snarled and said, â??What, Atlas sent his little fag?â? Eoinâ??s face didnâ??t change as he rolled up his sleeves: it was still the same, pleasant expression that belonged in the classroom or a lab and not in an old room that smelled of fish and urine. The scientist reached for one of those empty bottles and smashed it against the old table, the sound of glass tinkling, echoing against the high walls that shimmered with the patterns of illuminated water. Evans pulled away, a nasty smile on his face and body curled in expectation as Atlasâ?? little fag came over with the now deadly bottle.

He didn't try to strike up conversation this time: instead, he took the clear glass and mashed it into the manâ??s face, starting down low so he wouldnâ??t damage anything vital at first. The first jab lanced his lips, his jaw. The next, his nose. Eoin lost count, ignored the sound of the man screaming. By the time heâ??d destroyed the eyes, there was a gurgle that soon cut out. He wasnâ??t strong, not at all, but this was a matter of properly applied pressure. Evans was chuckling, and Eoin let the bottle slide from his hand to the floor before resting his manicured hands on shoulders that were still warm so he could turn the body around to face his friend. Evans, the sick bastard, was gleefully doing the same to the living one. â??Now,â? he said carefully, hands sliding up to hold the ruined head still. The second manâ??s eyes were wide as he took in the ruined mess that had used to be hisâ?¦ friend, coworker, whatever: the face was bloodied, unrecognizable as human, simply a pudding of blood, bone, brain, snot and muscle. He looked up to see caramel-colored eyes staring calmly back at him, pressed white shirt clean but forearms stained with blood. â??I believe we have a few questions for you.â?

The live one stared and stared and stared some more, his third eye open so his chin was nearly touching his chest. Then he swallowed and nodded, and Eoin didnâ??t even have to ask questions: the information came out, jumbled, but all of it, none of it warped by guile. Eoin smiled, then straightened and said, â??Right. Evans, Iâ??ll leave it to you to take care of this man. Feed him his friendâ??s dick, if you like.â?

â??Yessir.â?

So maybe â??fagâ?? had upset him more than he admitted. By the time he swept out, he could hear a muffled sort of whimpering.

 

[sevenpercentsolution]

Dr. Winston sat primly on his swivel chair and carefully performed surgery on his toast via a butter knife; next to him was a small, steaming china cup of tea that he couldn't remember making, but he knew he must have because he was the only one in the lab. Where had Sarah gone, anyways? They used to play chess during moments like these, and now the board sat sadly untouched - though it hadn't gathered any dust, because that sort of thing just didn't happen, he wouldn't allow it. Whenever Sarah got back, she could move her next piece and he wouldn't touch the board until she did - it was her move, after all, and he didn't cheat, cheaters never prospered and besides that, Sarah would know - she had an excellent memory, it was just one of the many reasons she was such a fantastic scientist.

He had a good memory too - or at least, he'd thought he did, but things had been a little fuzzy lately. For instance, he couldn't for the life of him remember how he had ended up with teeth marks on his arm; he frowned at the angry red ring of cuts just below his wristbone - it was incredibly sore, and - wasn't it a little strange, a human bite mark? Surely there was something not right about that, didn't that mean someone had -

- the radio built into the wall began to crackle, and then music began to filter through.

Unforgettable, that's what you are.

Winston paused with his fingers just ghosting near the cuts, frozen in silent attentiveness.

Unforgettable, through near or far.

He looked puzzled for a moment, his thin eyebrows furrowing - what had he just been thinking about?

Like a song of love that clings to me, how the thought of you does things to me, never before has someone been more, unforgettable in every way. And forever more, that's how you'll stay.

He rose suddenly, mechanically, and crossed the room, he lifted up a small medical bag and he picked a key up off the coat rack and then slid it aside; the backboard slid with it, and revealed a small doorway - he passed through it, and he removed a large syringe from the bag at the same time, closing the door behind him with his foot. Another voice could be heard then, heavy with an accent and pleading:

"Nein, no, no, no - not again!"

There was a soft click, followed by a choked sound of pain and then silence. Dr. Winston came back out holding the empty syringe, pushed the coat hanger back into place, and returned to his tea.

That's why darling, it's incredible that someone so unforgettable, thinks that I am unforgettable too.

-

Kevin wore his utility belt; he wore it because he couldn't help feeling that, somehow, it would come in handy - after all, a tradesman should never be without his tools and this was no exception because there really wasn't a rule book for this sort of thing. He had stepped out of his home now, partly because the door was missing and partly because there was mashed bits of brain all over his living room now, but mostly because he was quite certain something wasn't right.

"Excuse me," Kevin said; he had made his way to one of the many glass hallways, and up until then, he hadn't encountered anyone - he had felt a small measure of relief when he had found a man standing at the base of the staircase; he tapped the man gently on the shoulder, "Excuse me, sir? I wonder if you could help me, please. It's just that I'm not sure -"

The man spun around slowly, and Kevin's voice died in his throat when he realized the man was wearing a paper mache rabbit mask. Kevin closed his mouth and swallowed, licked his lips, shifted his feet uncomfortably and glanced around as the rabbit-man stared at him.

"Erm," Kevin said, finger still in the air, and he watched as the man's shoulders lifted and fell with his heaving breath, "You - you know what - nevermind."

He put his hands up in front of him,

"I'm fine. Go back to looking at the stairwell. I'm just going to walk over here." Kevin said, and pointed to the right. When he turned to go in that direction, he found himself looking at a paper mache pig mask; he wrung his hands, "There's going to be one of you behind me now, isn't there?"

He didn't turn around, he just pulled a wrench from his tool belt and did the best he could.

 

[Kawamura]

The security door glowed coolly under the low lights from outside. Something big and aquatic floated by, casting a warped shadow across the security door that wandered along the metal at the same lazy speed. Eoin wasnâ??t quite sure if the sight was nightmarish or just surreal; something outside groaned, perhaps one of those giant golems or perhaps it was the sound of Raptureâ??s slow, steady death. There was the banging, too, the constant sound of a renegade monster searching for a little, baby escort. The redhead wanted to shiver but instead said in a calm, clear voice that he couldnâ??t recognize, â??So how do we go about entering this place?â?

Another bang. Louder.

â??We could rope one of those Big Daddies up for us.â? Eoin turned his head toward his left, not looking at the quarter of his escort that had spoken, but listening. No, his eyes were still stuck on the door: theyâ??d think he was still considering the massive amount of steel but instead his mind was trying to translate what they had just said. Rope a Big Daddy? Why, one would need to be a Little Sister to catch their attention in a way that didnâ??t end up with one of the monsters drilling a new whole into a person. Of course, when The Boss didnâ??t speak, Muscles #3 continued, filling in the silence and the faint sound of screaming. â??Mr. Atlas gave it to us, sir,â? he said nervously. Even someone who could crush a manâ??s chest in with one hand was afraid of the nutty splicers. One or two, now, that was fine. But sometimes the lunatics managed to band together and then one had a pack of beings that laughed like hyenas but wielded weapons like men. â??Scrambles their brains for a bit. Makes â??em think youâ??re a Little Sister. One of them drills would work real nice.â?

A sharp, piercing scream that sent all of their hands to their weapons. A womanâ??s voice, maybe, or a childâ??s. The sound was cut off quickly and somewhere above metal and wood clattered about.

The banging had stopped. There was an echoing sound of heavy boots shuffling and though Big Daddies didnâ??t bother anyone that didnâ??t mess with them first, the middle-aged man felt a panic attack threaten to close down his windpipe.

â??â??Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes,â??â? Eoin muttered miserably, and Number Three gave him a stupid, dull look. Even afraid, Eoin had a moment where he hated the guard and his flat gaze. There was nothing there, all the lights turned off, soda without the pop. The geologist wanted to pluck out his eyes with his old rock hammer, mash them up and rub them into the empty sockets for all the good they did the dullard. The moment passed and he hissed: â??Well, go on, man. Donâ??t just stand there and lollygag. Move.â?

Another rattle. Eoin stepped back into the shadow of another guard, Muscle #1, a large, dark bear of a man, his favourite. Sometime ago, heâ??d lost his tongue, literally, and the Irishman appreciated not having to listen to unintelligent garbage from him. He hated this place.

---

â??Ssssssss.â? She hissed along with her hooks, pleased, oh so very pleased at the sound of metal sliding on metal, sending off sparks and infintesimely small shards of steel that she could practically taste. Her face was curled, lips twisted into a smile, an enraptured smile, nearly orgasmic, nearly talking-in-tongues, high-on-jazz-and-booze-and-medicines-cooked-up-in-little-labs orgasmic. Ssssssssssssss. She let out a startled bark of laughter, snickering as it echoed along the glass walls, and even the water outside seemed to shimmer with her voice. She was powerful. She was power. She could hear the EVE singing in her veins, pretty, oh so pretty blue, so pretty, so very much like the pretty ocean and like those pretty cocktails they served down in the dark bars of Harlem and Atlanta and she missed them so much, so very much, but she didnâ??t miss the being afraid, didnâ??t miss being â??Sweet Thingâ?? and â??that high yellow girlâ?? when here she was the toughest thing on the block and on the roof and her hooks sang soprano when she went for her prey.

â??Maaaaaaaaaybeeeeee.â? Her voice was reedy, voice hoarse from abuse. She screamed lots these days. â??Youuuuuuuuâ??ll think of meeeeeeee.â? The Inkspots had never been sung such a way: her voice was a creepy rasp, sending even other splicers running. She was the toughest thing on the block. She was big in a little package. She glided down the stairs with all the air of a queen surveying her kingdom.

â??When youuuuuuuuuu are all...â?

Ssssssssssssss.

â??Alooooooneee.â?

 

[sevenpercentsolution]

Strictly speaking, Kevin wasn't a fighter; he'd never really fought as a child, and he'd certainly had sensibilities about avoiding it now as an adult, but surrounded by a trio of knife-wielding crazies, he found that Things Just Happened - somewhere along the line, he had taken out his hammer as well, and now one of them had run away, another was on the ground shrieking, and the third had become a new storage space for his wrench because it was presently embedded in the top of the man's skull. It wasn't that Kevin was violent - far from it, in fact, but some part of himself he hadn't been entirely aware of up until then fully understood the neccessity of what he was doing, because if he didn't get away from these men, he would never be able to find his brother.

He evened his breathing, which sounded harsh in the sudden silence of the wide hall, and he looked around himself, suddenly nervous again - were there others nearby, had they heard all of the commotion, and would they be able to help them or would they be exactly like these people had been?

He'd killed two men, now, but he didn't want to think about it, he would think about it later.

The shriek of metal on metal caught his attention; Kevin looked up from where he was standing and his eyes swivelled to the staircase; there was something coming down the steps at a full on run, and this time when fight or flight kicked in, the carpenter took the second option and ran for his life, because sometimes that really was the best option.

--

The metal stoppers of a chair squeaked as they were dragged across the cement floor, propelled by the thick rubber soles of a pair of large steel-toe boots; the attached legs were strapped to the chair via carefully placed medical restraints, so the progress of the chair could only be measured in centimetres. A hoarse voice spoke, but to no one in particular,

"Oh ja, this vas brilliant," he said, pausing to tug irritably at the straps on his arms, "'No,' I said, 'I vill not stay in East Germany, I don't like this wall idea', I said, 'It seems like it could be another attempt to suppress us - no, I von't take a job mit der biological warfare research unit, no, I haff been offered better opportunities, down in der bottom of der motherfucking sea!'"

Otto didn't even know where he was anymore; he had been blindfolded for what felt like days now, shoved around from room to room with his arms tied behind him until he'd been shoved into this chair and kept there with nothing, save for the intervals where he would hear the door open - he knew the footsteps now, though at first he had barely been able to hear them because the man was so light on his feet, but then there was always the smell - it was distinct, something astringent mixed with the odd scent of tea and pine.

Then came the hands, which were disgustingly gentle for what they did to him; they would cut him open, make him bleed, and they were always carefully measured cuts, like the wielder of the knife was using a ruler to measure it out, and the needle would always follow - the ADAM, the injection that automatically healed the wound but still left him twitching from the ghost of pain. His torturer never spoke to him but would sometimes hum gently while he did his work, always the same tune, and then it was done as quickly as it had started, and he was left in the room again, in darkness and silence.

He wanted out. He wanted out before he came back again, because he could feel it after every injection - something inside of him was changing now, something terrible was happening to his body, and he knew that each syringe full of that poison would only make it worse. He needed to get out.

The chair squeaked again, the back of it struck something solid; he could use his fingers enough to feel out the smooth metal of stainless steel - there was an operating table behind him, and that particular knowledge caused a sudden lurch in the German's stomach.

It probably would have lurched even more if he had known there was someone's head on the table.

 

[Kawamura]

Steady.

The womanâ??s shriek was frightening and usually, usually theyâ??d leave sleeping dogs lie, but she was chasing something.

Aim.

Someone. Young man. Face clear of the insane grin of a Splicer, and normal folks were rare to find. God keep the soul of that woman, but she was so far gone.

Exhale.

He had to take care of the children of God that were still in their right minds, and may God have mercy on his soul for the blood on his hands.

Fire.

The figure on the stairs, emaciated because her drug of choice had left her without hunger, kept flying towards them for a long second after the shot had hit her. For a moment, he thought she was still alive and royally angry now, but no, she skittered to a stop about three feet past the end of the stairs, leaving behind a trail of blood and brain. The child next to him, the little girl he had been sent to find, inhaled a sudden, but quiet, breath of air instead of screaming in fear.

---

CRACK.

Gunshot. Eoin immediately crouched down, pulling out his own gun while Muscle #1 turned â??round back and forth, arms swinging up to a good punching stance. Number Three stared around with wide eyes, because where there were guns, there wereâ??

The howling started low then got much, much higher as female voices joined the fray. Christ. Christ, Christ, Christ. Splicers. A dozen or more of them, intrigued by working arms and loud noises and the removal of one of those queen crazies. Those agile nuts were trouble even to the regs, the ones that hadnâ??t got their hands on scythes. And with her gone, theyâ??d be moving in to scavenge. â??Someoneâ??s gone and rattled the monkey cage. Get this door open!â? Eoin yelled over the rising din, which had before just been dominated by the bang, bang, bang of a single Big Daddy.

Number three clutched his meaty fist together, muscles in his arms flexing under hairy, gleaming skin, and opened his hand to reveal what looked like an old, rotting apple.

---

â??Oh, dear.â? He was small, not much to look at, and now that he had lowered the gun he was moving with a nervous sort of energy. His chin was up, revealing the white and black of a priestâ??s collar because, really, there was no point in hiding it these days. Alan Roth was fifty-two years old, a tiny bundle of over-the-hill energy that rose next to the little girl. Mary-Lee. Mother had died, father was still alive in the little commune they had created. She trembled next to him, a little ghost of a girl that had seen too much even past this quick killing of an insane husk of a human being.

She would be for many years, Alan had promised himself, but only if they got out of here. Faith in the Almighty Father was important, but there was no point in testing the Lord when Heâ??d given them guns and the brains to run away from a swarm of Splicers. The small blonde head jerked to the boy that had been running from the â?¦ woman. â??Weâ??ve got to get out of here,â? he said, voice a clear, calm tone, as if they were discussing a sermon not a possible ambush. â??Come with us,â? he said, grabbing the girlâ??s hand. The white, delicate thing disappeared in his palm, small as she was.