Fighting the clock. Always fighting the clock. Shift the tiles, find the outlets, make the path.
Make the pipes move. Just make the pipes move. You were always good at that. It's like they want to move for you, they just need your hand to do it.
Yeah. The pipes always liked moving for me. The needles, too. They'd leap over the alarms and the faulty areas, linger over the safe parts and the sweet spots.
You know, too. Just when to hit it. Just how close to get if you can't. And hell if I've seen anyone else that could tell at a glance how old it was. They all look exactly the same.
That was easy, though. Newer parts of the city were all needle hacks. You could do those from a distance if you had the dart. Older sections were pipes and fluid.
"Shit-!"
The machine let out an unpleasant honking noise as it started leaking and zapped me. I staggered back, head reeling. This was a hard one. I'd already messed it up three times. I could only watch as the machine found the leak and re-paneled the spot before re-routing itself again. I was close to passing out. But I would rather have died and been found by one of the Little Sisters than go home to say I'd failed. Stick the halo on me, I'd be an angel. Take back all the damn ADAM da pumped into me back. Fine.
Oh, yeah. I was as spliced up as they came. Electro-bolt to stun the cameras and turrets. Telekinesis to redirect the RPGs. And a veritable cocktail of tonics to make hacking as second-nature to me as breathing.
As good at that as I was, someone had their hand around my neck when it came to this one.
Calm down. You're gettin' in your own way, can't'cha see that? Don't think. Just look. Just look and let your hands do the work. They can think for themselves.
Right. Deep breath. Calm down. Start again.
Hacker's Delight. Speedy Hacker. Hacking Expert. Vending Expert. Shorten Alarms. Thrifty Hacker.
Just to name the ones that I was using as I hacked that particular vending machine. I'll never forget my first one, either. Hacker's Delight. The basic one, not the upgrade. Da talked about it like it was a treat. Have some ADAM for dessert, girl. Here's daddy with a long-ass needle and a crazed smile on his face. No, this won't hurt a bit. You'll just feel a pinch when the needle goes in.
And then the blinding, bone-wracking pain as your genetic code gets re-written.
Just let the pipes move.
I did like it. The rhythmic chinking of the pipes as they touched, the soft sound of the tiles as I brushed them away. Calming. Therapeutic. This was what I was supposed to do. And bring the spoils back home to the family. Without getting killed. Boy, da would be pissed if I got myself killed. All that wasted ADAM.
I wasn't a daughter to him anymore. I knew that. I was an investment. And I was precious to him, no doubt-but not as precious as others. I could feel the cold cylinder of the pistol he'd given me, tucked into the back of my pants. The fingers that could move the pipes so quick were pretty fast at reloading, too. But it was my older brother that got the big guns. The most protection. Houdini, they called him. And aside from vanishing in a cloud of red-call is dust, call it blood, call it rose petals, for all I care-he was totally hopped up on plasmids. Incinerate, fully upgraded. Winter Blast, the same. Cyclone Trap. Insect Swarm. Hypnotize Big Daddy, for fuck's sake. And Security Bullseye for the places I hadn't been sent to yet.
I was supply and mechanical defense. My older sister was homeland. She was almost hard to look at-I remember when we were younger, before she was spliced. So pretty. So normal. Before she started crawling on the walls and flinging those damn hooks. Before she was a half-insane, screaming wretch. Lying in wait like the bug she was named for.
A spider splicer at home to keep it safe. A leadhead hacker for perimeter and supplies. And a Houdini splicer to go out into the field. Someone had to go get all the ADAM.
Ding ding.
"Yes!"
Finally. The damn vending machine was hacked. Normally, I couldn't stand the stupid and annoying music they played, much less the voice they used, but now it was cause for celebration. I felt better, too-a surge of health and EVE provided by the hack. Who knew that a surge of adrenaline related to hacking could do that. All thanks to that stupid sea slug.
I rifled through the money da had given me before sending me out. First aid kits and EVE hypos, those were my priorities. I bought the machine out of them. What else? Ammo? No, I had to pay for that out of pocket.
Food and drink. Things with healing properties. They would be next. Stretching da's hard-won cash as far as it could go and then some. If I could have emptied the machine of everything it held, I would have.
I shoved everything into an old canvas sack that was slung over my shoulder. Everything except one of the bottles of vodka. That I cracked into right away, knocking back a big gulp right from the bottle and flexing my free hand-my plasmid hand. ADAM was a hell of a drug, and EVE felt real good surging back into your system.
That was a tonic I'd found on my own and used to my advantage. I was a regular Booze Hound, always half drunk or at least buzzed. It made Rapture at least a little more bearable. Boy, I'd built up a tolerance to the stuff over the years. No worry about liver failure. Genetic healing from first-aid kits saw to that. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the stuff made our dental records unreliable.
Halfway home, and the bottle was gone. It always seemed that the bottles dried up too quick. Ah well.
Footsteps behind me. Quick. Heels. The telltale click of a hammer. Someone just like me. Maybe a little crazier. Spliced up past being human and trying to survive. We had that much in common.
I turned and threw the empty bottle, guiding it by spending some of my precious EVE on telepathic precision. It caught the woman square between the eyes and knocked her back. Her shot went wide and high and before she hit the ground I'd pumped two of my own into her.
So maybe I was only as sane as she was. I didn't stop to consider it as I snatched the pistol from her hand and looted her body. Bullets were bullets and EVE was EVE. She had a hypo. I'd already scratched the cost and amounts of what I'd bought out on an ancient piece of paper for da. Whatever I killed I could keep. I didn't hesitate before shooting up the beautiful blue liquid. I hardly felt the needle anymore, but god, the way it felt to have all my power back. The tonics and the alcohol could only do so much. But the energy, the strength, the pleasure from straight EVE. It steadied you and at the same time made you weak at the knees. Sharpened your mind and made it swim. When you had EVE, you were on top of the world.
And when you ran out, you were fucked.