-Pidge-
"...The only way to get through that door Fontaine went though is to have a little one open it for you. Und they'll only trust you if you look like, sound like, und even smell like one of those big, stinking brutes." Tenenbaum tells you as you step into the lobby of Point Prometheus. Her heavy accent carries all the disdain she's carried for the things she's unwittingly helped create and the thing you'll have to become in order to get to Fontaine.
Big Daddies... you've killed plenty of them to rescue their Little Sisters but you've never given much thought to where they come from. You're not sure if you'll ever want to know, but standing here, hearing faint discordant music in the distance, you don't think you'll be able to remain ignorant for long.
You climb the stairs and head down the hall for the Optimized Eugenics wing. There's apparently a piece you'll need there to fool the Little Sisters into thinking you're a Big Daddy, but you've got a different priority. You ignore Tenenbaum squawking through your radio about wasting time and dial in the code to the door label S.& C. Holt, and stand back as it slides open. There's a short corridor split off from the main room by a wall of glass, and through it you can see what remains of the lab. It's dark, the lights flickering sporadically which only makes the scene inside all the more confusing. Bits and pieces of lab equipment appear to be floating, spinning in gentle circles around a young woman sitting crosslegged on a table in the center. Staying as quiet as you can, you creep to the edge of the glass and peer around.
As if on cue the door behind you slams shut and locks itself tight.
"Where are they?" a voice growls and you look back to find the girl in the lab staring at you over her shoulder, eyes obscured behind the light reflecting off the round lenses of a pair of spectacles. She's small, slender, and can't be more than 17, but the unfiltered fury seething in her voice is downright intimidating. The levitating objects are starting to move faster.
"I said: Where are they?" she repeats, turning slowly to face you. The reflected light slips off her glasses and behind them her eyes glow an eerie green.
You don't have time to try and answer before something speeds toward your head and you duck to avoid getting brained, hearing glass shatter against the wall behind you. You figure it would probably be a good idea to move.
You take a dive into the room as Pidge (because this has to be Pidge) snarls, tracking you with a turn of her head. "Where's my mom?" she growls, sending another piece of lab equipment at you without so much as a twitch of her fingers.
"Where's my dad?" you can't finish dodging the first thing before another comes careening for you, forcing you flat to the floor.
"Where's Matt?" the swirl of objects around her turns into a veritable tornado and its all you can do to keep from getting pummeled. You dive from cover to cover, hiding behind decks and overturned tables, though it seems like even they are having a hard time staying on the ground.
"I know you took them," she shrieks, "give them back!"
You brace yourself for the large glass beaker that come barreling for your head and right before it collides you give it a hefty burst of your own Telekinesis, flinging it out of orbit and back at the one who first threw it. The maneuver catches Pidge off guard and the glass smashes into her shoulder, peppering her with shattered shards and pulling out a cry of pain. Her glare is made all the more horrible by the fresh blood trickling down her face.
"I'm not going down so easily," she hisses, slowly rising to her feet. "If you won't tell me where they, you can't stop me from tearing this place apart to find them!"
She clenches her hands and the floor shakes, everything that was too heavy before lifts off the ground and leaving you entirely exposed. Waves of glassware and beaker stands, bunsen burners and various implements that you don't have names for do their damnedest to try and bludgeon you to death, and the ones that escape being shattered by bullets or flung back by your plasmids very nearly succeed. You really hope that you imagined the sharp crack that sounds from your ribcage when you're hit right in the chest by a metal lab stool, but the pain begs to differ.
Eventually you ditch trying to get a shot in and put all your efforts into fighting Telekinesis with Telekinesis. You push your EVE reserves to the limit, deflecting back whatever you can, scoring the odd hit on the young woman enough to the point when the flying objects start to slow. She drops to a knee, breathing hard and glaring daggers with eyes beginning to flicker, though as angry as she is its apparent that she has less stamina than you do.
With one last furious scream she wrenches the cabinets off the walls, sending them careening across the room with a shower of wood splinters, looking to crush you against the back wall. You duck under one, smack another away with a swing of your wrench, and make a dash for her. Catching the next cabinet in a telekinetic grip you turn yourself into a battering ram, letting the rest of the objects impact against your makeshift shield. You hear Pidge give a short cry right before you vault up onto the table and break the cabinet against her. She collapses against the table, panting and dazed, and everything else that was once airborne comes crashing to the floor.
"I just... I just wanted to find them..." she croaks, voice breaking around the edges. "You need to pay... you need to pay for what you did to them! They're still here, I know it!"
You don't have the heart to tell her that she's wrong. You don't really know what all happened down here, but it certainly seems like the people who got on Fontaine's bad side either never came back, or came back as something different. Her family is most likely beyond saving at this point.
She fights back when you try to use the syringe, sinking her nails into your arm and drawing blood. It's easy to pin her now that her plasmid has burned out, though from the rage burning in her eyes you can tell that she's still trying to use it against get the needle in her neck and give her room to sweat through the reaction.
She gasps and shakes and curls up on herself before laying still. Eventually she turns over, staring up at the ceiling with a frustrated expression on her face. One of the lenses on her glasses was cracked. "I'm here..." she says, mulling over the words, "I came back here..."
With a sigh she rubs her eyes, groaning with discomfort. She peeks out between her fingers, eyeing you, sitting on the edge of the table, with suspicion. "I don't know you... but if I'm here... did Shiro send you?"
You nod, standing stiffly and awkwardly extend a hand to help her up, one which she blatantly ignores. She pushes herself off the table, moving gingerly. She's probably more sore and bruised than you are you realize, but you can't offer any assistance before she's already marched out of the lab, picking her way over debris and shattered glass. At the door she wrenches open a panel, inputs a code, and steps out. You can see her silhouette striding purposely down the hall from the other side of the frosted windows.
You take a weary breath and stretch, feeling the fresh bruises catch and pull. This fight's left you tired, more so than the others for the sheer strain you can feel in your nerves for using so many plasmids. But, you can practically feel Tenenbaum hovering on the other side of the radio, so with a sigh you pick yourself up and get to combing through the lab.
The EVE hypos you scrounge out of the remaining cabinets are a godsend that makes the pounding in your head a little more bearable. As with every other fight there's an audio log stashed away behind an old photo of a younger Pidge hanging from the shoulders of a slightly older boy, a man and woman behind them. Her family, without a doubt. You sit back and let the young woman's voice wash over you while the rest of your headache slowly disappears.
"I can't believe it," she says, intensity straining her voice, "Shiro came back. He actually came back. I didn't- after all this time I... I was starting to lose hope. But he came back, even if he's different now. Whatever they did to him... it messed him up to the point where he can't remember much from when he was missing. Considering that they took half of his damn arm I can't blame him for it. Even though the memories are gone, he keeps telling himself that he's going to try to fix things, that he needs to find a cure for the plasmids before its too late. He's going to need my help but I... haven't told him that I've used them yet. I can't. If I'm going to keep trying to find my family I need something to give me a leg up. I'm glad Shiro's back but this means that I definitely can't stop. After all, if he was able to escape, than maybe Mom, Dad and Matt are still okay."
The audio log grinds to a stop and leaves the lab in silence. The kid was chasing ghosts based on very little evidence and she almost lost herself because of it. You can't condemn her for turning to plasmids though; the power it grants you is well worth the terrifying things its done to your body, and you're fairly certain that if it weren't for them you'd be long dead at this point. But for a teenage girl to feel like she needs to risk losing her mind in exchange for power says a lot about how far this place has gone to hell.
Rapture is far beyond saving, just like most of the people who had fallen to the temptation of a false paradise. You can only hope that all you've done has saved the people worth saving. You stand back up, dust yourself off, and go on your way. Its time to bury Fontaine for all he's done.
