They were all stacked together in that tiny single cell, laying on each other's shoulders. This was their only comfort for they were like brothers now, spending nearly every waking hour alone or with each other. The bare and boney shoulder of some stranger you knew better than any one else, this was the only comfort they knew back then. In this manner he slept on his friend's shoulder, knowing soon they'd all be taken away. He felt someone grab his arm and pull him away with a hard tug. Every couple of weeks or so they were transferred from the Labs to the Show floor of Fontaine Futuristics where they'd be forced to show the happy and rich of Rapture how they could genetically alter themselves next.
The sedatives were wearing off by the time they were all rushed to the make up room. They weren't necessarily allowed to speak to the make up girls, but sometimes they'd forget. He sat motionless on a chair, chained to the floor. The make up girl was young and beautiful, he couldn't even bare to look at her. But he felt her with her gently put powder all over his face to hide his wounds and scars. They were splicing him up nearly every day and he was starting to look it. He hadn't been able to get a glimpse of himself in the mirror, but by the looks of the other test subjects he knew he couldn't look that much better. He felt her trying to cover some growth on the side of his head that was making some of his hair fall out. Luckily they had a wig for him so she moved on to his arms, covering up the wounds there.
He couldn't even remember which of those scratches were from Persephone and which were from the Labs.
The make up girl finished up on him and smiled. He finally looked at her, deep and sad eyes that she just kept smiling at.
"There you go, now you're handsome again." She said.
They had to look pretty for the crowds. They couldn't scare off the citizens of Rapture away from splicing with their grotesque reactions to all the new Plasmids they were being tested with. So every time they were brought to the show floor the make up girls would come in and cover up all the pain. They were all getting worse though. There were normal signs of thinning of course, the diet of a lab rat was not a great one. But then there were the abnormalities, the tumors and growths sprouting from broken down genetics. It was like they all had cancer, bones grew too big for the skin, hair was falling out, and flesh kept growing.
They were testing new Plasmids being developed. They were given prototypes and when those failed they'd have to be given counteractive Plasmids to save their lives. People weren't meant to splice like this. Maybe they weren't meant to splice at all. Once they tried to give his old cell mate the ability to breath underwater. He grew gills and suffocated to death because he couldn't breath the normal air anymore. Someone got to test the first trial of Incinerate, his skin started burning and he burst into flames, but he wouldn't die. He screamed at the pain but he wouldn't die. The doctors left him alone because they thought the fire would burn his nerve endings and he'd either stop feeling the pain or would die, but he kept on living, and he kept on feeling the pain. He doesn't know what the doctors ending up doing with that guy. A couple of them died because of hypothermia from Winter Blast, one of the guy's who first tried it had his blood instantly freeze inside him. Then there were some guys with misshapen muscles or legs that couldn't stop running from SportsBoost and the like.
But the fit ones, the ones like him who were at least somewhat presentable were taken the show floor with successful Plasmids. But like he said, they were all getting worse. Luckily the audience was twenty feet away from them so you could hardly tell they were wearing more make up than Sander Cohen. The distance was excused for the audience safety, but that was all a lie.
They were marched up to behind the curtain, their chains being removed by the doctors. He held up his left hand, it wouldn't stop shaking. He had a piercing headache that followed him into his dreams and it felt like there was some sort of crack in his skull that reached all the way down his spine. He reached weakly for one of the doctors as they passed by checking off the inmates. The Doctor stopped and he tried to form the words to speak but something in his head disconnected and he seemed to forget what he was going to say. The Doctor turned away, frustrated but he held onto her.
"My hands." He finally coughed out. "They won't stop shaking."
She looked at him coldly, indifferent. She looked at her clipboard.
"That's a normal reaction, it'll go away in time." She said.
"It's not." He said, that's all he could say.
"It will go away in time."
He had more to say to her but the words wouldn't come. The headache was getting worse and he couldn't think past it. He knew he needed Adam, that's what this headache was. But he cursed himself, knowing it was the Adam that was killing him.
He heard the familiar roar of applause. A small shock went through the entire group of subjects, one of the Doctor's using Electro Bolt to wake them up, now was their time to shine. The group straightened their backs, and prepared as the curtain was drawn and bright lights shined down on them.
They were on the stage now, a large platform with some water between them and the audience and podiums that when activated via a Plasmid let out confetti and what not, those were crowd pleasers.
Dr. Alexander walked out to the front of the stage, looking nervous and he held index cards in his hands.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we at Fontaine Futuristics and Ryan Plasmids work tirelessly to bring you the latest and greatest genetic wonders. Our wonderful volunteers here will now demonstrate some of our newest sensations."
Dr. Alexander turn to them then and they did their dance routine. Fire from their hands and ice and electricity. They made tornadoes on the floor combined with fire. They jumped onto the tornados, landing on the feet on the ceiling with claws the Doctors had made them. Machines were deployed that the subjects dodged and together forced to the water where they sent electrical shocks into it, disabling it. All while the audience laughed and clapped their hands.
He was pouring fire out of his palms when he began to notice something wrong with one of the other subjects. The audience was clapping as his hands and blood were burning. It was then he was looking up to the ceiling to watch as some of the boys climbing the walls weren't doing their routine. They were talking to each other and motioning to the bullet-proof glass that separated them and the audience. He kept thinking oh, no as the audience clapped.
Finally one of the boys dropped down from the ceiling, sticking his claws into the glass. The audience screamed. Another one touched the glasses with his palm, covering it in ice. The audience stood up in the chairs, they could no longer see the performance but they could hear as the test subjects on the other side of the glass banging up against it. Cracks began to form. The boys clawed at the glass, ramming into it with their modified bones and muscles, trying desperately to get out. They were pushing against the glass with their combined telekinesis, together trying to pry the glass from the wall.
"We'll kill them!" They were screaming. "We'll kill them all for this!"
He wondered why he was so surprised by this behavior, they were after all criminals from Persephone. He stood at the center stage, watching as the other subjects were brought into the frenzy. This was a jail break, and innocent snobs were going to suffer. They all gathered by the glass side, and he saw them all, standing in the water. He frowned, and sent lightning from his fingertips into the water. His friends and brothers fried and fell into the water. He pushed the Crawlers who stuck to the glass down with a loud thud with telekinesis. They fell into the electrified water.
The audience paused and stared at the frozen window. Slowly a hand print formed on the other side of the glass and it began to melt the glass away. He was warming the ice with his Incinerate and he was the only one the audience saw once the ice thawed. They smiled and began clapping.
He stared at them, saddened, now alone. He had murdered his friends to the applause of the happy innocent snobs. He frowned and took his place back at center stage. The bodies were in the water and the audience couldn't even see them. Dr. Alexander came onto the stage, clapping and smiling along with them.
"Let's give our volunteer a hand, nice little show, eh?
The curtain drew, the doctors argued amongst themselves, orderlies came out to collect his friends' bodies. He looked up, not wishing to move unless someone told him to, but it seemed he'd been forgotten as the doctors clicked their tongues and cast out blame for the outburst. It was madmen, some of them said, they were criminals, but others were blaming the splicing. He finally took a step towards them and they all suddenly paused and hushed themselves.
He looked at them and held up his glowing hands with lightning in them.
"My hands. They won't stop shaking." He told them.
The arguing continued as they took him back into the Labs. A doctor put her palm to her forehead and took his arm, a tube stuck out of his forearm ready for their injections. She injected a familiar cold serum into him and instantly he felt like his head was floating away from him and he grew silent. His make up was smearing off, his hair continued to fall out and he felt the pain slip away as the Doctors' voices continue on in their endless droning. He shut his eyes and tried to remember what the sun looked like.
When they finally got to the Labs he was placed on a stretcher and taken through the halls. His other friends and brothers watched and noted that he was the only one to return from another one of those shows. He didn't care anymore that he had killed them, he knew their efforts would've been fruitless anyway, Ryan's forces were more spliced up than they were. What were they going to do, fight their way to the surface? He heard the rumors anyway, he knew there was a war outside the Lab walls. Wasn't the lab then the safest place to sleep and die?
He slept inside his own skin, feeling the headache start to return and his bones began to hurt again. His fire was burning from the Incinerate and he was trying to fight the pain off just so he could sleep a little longer and dream of the sun.
He heard voices in his room but he couldn't make them out. Whoever they were they began to touch him, pressing against his chest and checking his pulse. He finally opened his eyes to see the blurry images of a woman and a man examining him.
"This one looks familiar." Brigid Tenebaum noted.
"Well, that's Johnny Topside." A nurse replied from the doorway. "You know, the diver that used to be in the papers back when."
He looked up at the woman, Brigid Tenebaum, who was laying a gentle hand on his check. She stared at his glazed eyes and he thought she was beautiful too.
"Open your mouth, please." Tenebaum asked.
He heard her but didn't understand, she opened his jaw for him and stared down his throat for God knows what reason. She closed his jaw and then lifted one of his eyelids, flashing a light into his eyes. He turned away from her.
"I'm sorry, I have to." She told him.
She again pulled open his eyelids, staring at him as he stared into her.
He suddenly felt something bang against his knee and his leg kicked up. Tenebuam looked back at Yi Suchong.
"Reaction time is still good." Suchong nodded. "A little underweight, but should be no problem."
Tenebaum looked down at him once again, it struck him how terribly sad she looked.
"Yes." She agreed with Suchong. "He'll do fine."
He didn't know what they were talking about, he didn't care. He was sick and dying, he knew that already. All he had to do was suffer and wait. He could do that, he thought, that would be easy. He felt the headache coming on and his Adam thirst building. He felt his bones grinding against new and torn muscle. He felt the fever and decided to sleep once more.
When he awoke next he was struck by how clean and quiet the lab he found himself in was. He looked down at his arms, no longer in the common restraints the doctors usually put him in. He noticed a new marking on his left hand, a dark triangle, Delta.
He heard someone coming up the hallway and he turned in a fright, but that's when he saw a little sickly looking girl pass by. She stopped and looked at him with glowing yellow eyes. She smiled before skipping off with Doctors following close behind her.