Dylan slowed to a stop in the first lobby he entered in Minerva's Den and was met with the flashes of bullets fired by the Security Bots and Non-Hostile Alpha Series with large machine guns as they fired towards a shadowy figure that was scurrying on the pipes against the ceiling with un-human cackles that echoed in the room. Lilith quickly and carefully set herself on the floor and looked up at the pipes only able to see the shadow of what the bots and the Protectors were trying to hit, then she looked over as Dylan slowly walked forward and she quickly followed him. He held up his left arm and a spear gun appeared, fully-loaded, on his arm before he released a Rocket Spear after aiming towards a pipe that the scurrying creature was heading to and water bursted from the collision as the pipe collapsed onto the ground and a loud thud was heard on the floor while water continued to rush down in a water-fall like motion. The Alpha Series' slowly lowered their weapons as they waited for something to leap out of the waterfall Dylan had formed and the Bots hovered in the air mindlessly while waiting for an enemy to shoot at.
Lilith watched from behind Dylan silently, then her eyes darted behind her before her head followed and she looked behind her after hearing scurrying in the shadows. Dylan looked back at her and looked beyond her to the shadows before silently tapping an Alpha on the shoulder to get him to turn towards where Dylan was looking and the large Protector turned on the flash-light above the porthole of his helmet and slowly looked around in the shadows. Dylan followed the light slowly with his eyes until a shadowed creature darted from the light's view near the front desk and he narrowed his eyes while putting a hand out to Lilith to keep her back while he slowly creeped towards the desk. A dopple-ganger of Heba leaped out and onto Dylan with a loud un-human sound of amusement and he looked down at Dylan while pinning the Big Brother to the floor, the only difference between him and Heba being the crimson scorpion painted on the dopple-ganger's face on the right side.
Lilith forced the dopple-ganger off of Dylan by blasting a large stream of water at him and this sent the doppleganger against the wall and at the mercy of the Security Bots as he fled with a loud hiss. Dylan rushed to his feet and dashed after the creature in an angered dash while Lilith kept up with him easily while staying behind him as she followed him down the corridor with the Security Bots hovering overhead in a herd. The dopple-ganger hissed as he quickly climbed onto the wall and quickly scurried along it before leaping through a pair of slide-open doors into a dark room with a sound of amusement. Dylan skidded to a stop a distance from the double doors with Lilith stopping behind him and he looked up to see the Security Bots had frozen in their tracks, as if something signalled them to keep a distance from the doors.
"Dylan...sh-should we follow him?" Lilith asked softly.
"We have to...we can't let him run around and cause anymore trouble. It's not Alfred, but he might be working for him..." Dylan replied as he slowly walked towards the double-doors.
Lilith followed him slowly and looked back to see the Security bots forming a line of pairs behind her to prepare to follow as her and Dylan entered through the double doors. The inside of the room was dark and pitch-black, so Dylan's helmet was the only light in the room, other than the eye-looking portholes on the bots and the lights on their propellars, and Lilith took a hold of Dylan's hand gently to make sure she stayed close to him as they continued further into the room. Once they were in the center of the room, the bots let out whirring sounds as they suddenly dropped to the ground one-by-one and the lights on their propellars shut off as well as their portholes and Dylan and Lilith watched this before looking at each other before looking back over as three non-hostile Alpha Series Big Daddies entered the room while carrying firearms, as if they'd sensed that their first line of back-up had shut off. Dylan looked at Lilith silently before he moved even further into the room with Lilith at his side and the Alpha Series' walking behind them in a protective manner.
The doors suddenly locked themselves as the lights in the room switched on one-by-one and reveiled a large corridor that seemed endless. As Dylan and Lilith decended down the hall, the Alpha Series began to groan painfully as if something inside their helmets were causing them all pain as they continued slugging along behind the pair and Lilith occasionally looked back to see an Alpha Series helping his brethern continue on by pushing him ahead of himself. Dylan stopped suddenly and looked back hearing one of them collapse and the other two collapsed to their knees with painful groans and he looked at Lilith in confusion. Lilith frowned and shook her head to show that she had no idea what was happening to the Alpha Series' and Dylan looked at the Alphas before silently continuing down the corridor.
"Maybe it's something in the air..." Lilith said softly.
"Whatever it is, it made the Bots shut down without orders to do so too." Dylan replied.
Lilith nodded and looked back again to see all three Alphas lying on the ground before she slowly looked forward with a deeper frown as they continued down the corridor until they reached metallic double doors painted crimson. Dylan looked around cautiously for some kind of trap to spring out upon them standing in front of the door and hesitantly released Lilith's hand to try and feel the door for a handle or some kind of trigger to get it open while she kept watch for any Splicers or Hostile Big Daddies that might come their way. Both tensed hearing a familiur sound of amusement and Dylan snapped his head up just in time to see the Heba dopple-ganger leap down onto him and force him to the ground while Lilith was tangled in the long, reptile-like tail of an Atemu dopple-ganger that appeared out of the wall behind her in a shadow-like fog and he hovered behind her with a deadly grin on his face. Both dopple-gangers bared a crimson scorpion on the sides of their faces, only Atemu's was on the left side of his face while Heba's was on his right, and both dopple-gangers had the same look of wickedness and dark intention in their matching crimson eyes and in their grins.
The Heba dopple-ganger knocked Dylan's helmet off his head with a quick movement of his tail and made a sound of amusement while he tilted his head mockingly, as if he dared Dylan to try and use a plasmid on him while his tail traced a heart over Dylan's armor in the exact spot where Dylan's heart was underneath the leather, diving-suit material, and even under his skin and everything else underneath. The 18-year-old Big Brother tensed and hesitated and the Heba look-alike made a laughing sound while pushing himself off Dylan and into the shadows around the ceiling. Dylan grunted and quickly stood to his feet before the dopple-ganger appeared from the wall behind him and Dylan let out a loud groan of pain as the Heba look-alike clawed at Dylan's back and left deep gashes in his wake that quickly began to bleed heavily on his armor. Lilith tried to call out his name until the Atemu look-alike firmly pulled a white cloth over her mouth and gripped it tight against her mouth by pulling back on the ends while the Heba look-alike made laughing sounds while hovering in the air over Dylan while the Big Brother was on his knees on the floor as his back bled pure natural ADAM.
Dylan suddenly snapped his head up and his arms glowed a bright inferno red before he quickly rose to his feet and the next thing Lilith knew the Heba dopple-ganger was consumed in a violent inferno that sprang itself free from Dylan's entire arm while a loud screech of pain was heard through the corridor. The Atemu dopple-ganger dropped Lilith and moved to sink into the wall before being quickly frozen in place by a Winter Blast move by Dylan's other arm while his brother fell to the ground motionless and steaming heavily. Lilith slowly put a hand over her nose and mouth area to keep the stench of rotting flesh out of her system while she looked worriedly up at Dylan before her hand slowly dropped as a look of both shock and slight fear filled her eyes and developed on her face. Dylan's right arm glowed a magma red while his left arm glowed a winter blue while giving off frost while his right arm gave off bright orange embers, his back was slowly healing itself, and his eyes were a brighter yellowish-green than before with a tint of crimson around where his pupils would be if his eyes were that of a normal human.
Dylan silently walked past her to the frozen dopple-ganger and grunted loudly as he shattered the iced-over Atemu look-alike with a clenched fist which made Lilith jump slightly and close her eyes for a few seconds before she re-opened them. She shakily forced herself to her feet and slowly made her way over to Dylan while the Big Brother kept his back to her with his head slightly lowered while his arms slowly returned to normal. He slowly met her eyes after she was fully standing in front of him and blinked slowly seeing all the fear in her eyes gone and instead he found love and concern in her bright pink eyes as they stared back into his in-human ones. His face was a darker gray and she had to fight herself not to pull her hand away when it met his skin to find that it was even colder than corpse while he lifted a gloved hand to hold her hand there against his cheek for some kind of warmth.
"...Dylan...?" Lilith asked softly.
Dylan silently blinked in response to his name and Lilith frowned concernly at his silence. She gently used her other hand and rubbed his other cheek that wasn't already occupied while pondering on how she could turn Dylan back to his normal self, for she knew this was someone completly different than the Big Brother who had stolen her heart. This side of Dylan was something, she guessed, that even Martha had never seen and it was a side of him that, only Dylan knew, he had hidden for years as he matured and began his duty to protect Rapture and those like him and those he cared about. The look in his eyes showed determination and coldness towards his enemies while the eyes she knew as Dylan's showed warmth and careness.
She bit her lip as an idea came to her mind and she freed her lip from her teeth as she slowly leaned up and pressed her lips against Dylan's, receiving no response for the first three seconds until he slowly kissed back just as gently as she had claimed his while warmth returned to his entire body. Lilith kept her eyes open slightly to see Dylan's skin lighten in tone and his eyes slowly dim while the crimson tint vanished just as he closed his eyes to deepen the kiss and her eyes slowly closed as she felt his loving arms wrap around her waist protectively. He slowly broke the kiss after a few seconds and she smiled once her eyes slowly opened as she saw the warmth had returned in his eyes as he smiled back at her slightly and she looked at her left hand to see that both of her hands were gently resting on his biceps. The coolness of the leather on both arms was a relief compared to the coldness she had felt after touching Dylan's cheek after he had done away with the dopple-gangers and she met his eyes quickly at the memory only to relax slowly as she saw him staring at her with the same warmth that had drawn her into his arms in the first place.
"...Lilith...?" Dylan said softly.
"Yes, Dylan?" Lilith replied.
"Don't tell my mother what you saw...even though I only promised to hurt...if they hurt me first...I still don't want her to know about this. She didn't say anything about the Alphas, but that was different than now." Dylan said softly.
"Dylan, what happened? You changed into a totally different person just now...you scared me..." Lilith said while rubbing his biceps gently.
Dylan turned his head as the crimson door slowly slid open, then looked at her, "...I'll explain it on the way..."
Lilith nodded slightly and slowly lowered her hands from his arms as his arms left her waist and she took his offered hand before she walked alongside him through the doorway. Dylan was silent all the way and she felt him tense as the crimon door closed behind them with a loud thundering boom before the lights above them switched on to reveil that they were once again in another large corridor that also seemed endless, only this one had doors on each side of the corridor. She gently squeezed his hand while her other hand rested on his arm before they continued their walk down the corridor and she let her curiosity get the best of her and she glanced through the windows in the doors as they passed each one and she began to get a sick feeling in her stomach. Each room she saw had large machines in them filled with a bright green liquid that glowed in the darkness and each one had a human-looking figure in a fetal position inside them while the figure was connected to life support by wires that was patched to the caucassion skin of each figure.
That wasn't the part that bothered her the most. The part that bothered her about what she saw was the fact that each figure bore a resemblance to Dylan, but each one had a mutation, be it wings, claws, a tail, fins, anything that she could predict they had an animal-like mutation. Each one had closed eyes and she barely could see the monitors on each machine. Occasionally she saw one being attended to by a female in a white nurse outfit with a doctor's mask over her face and large goggles with gloves on her hands and each attendant usually carried a clipboard.
"...Dylan..." Lilith said shakily.
"Don't remind me, Lilith. I don't like what I'm seeing either." Dylan replied softly as he returned the squeeze on her hand while struggling to look forward and away from the windows.
"Dylan, you need to tell me what happened back there, because right now I'm worried and I'm scared and I think this has something to do with what happened back there...!" Lilith said softly and shakily while looking up at him sternly.
"...This has nothing to do with what happened...I know what's happening..." Dylan replied softly.