Disclaimer: Are these even necessary any more? Does anyone seriously read them? I feel like I can write anything up here and no one will even notice. Monkeys like bananas flying purple hippopotamus in a top hat. Abraham Lincoln storming the beaches of Normandy in a tuxedo. Point and case.

Tenenbaum gently rolled the man who had been Sigma down the halls of the facility in his wheelchair, adamant not to let her patient out of her sight. The guards followed a half pace behind them, stoic and stone-faced, as usual.

"Doctor," Porter said at last, his voice soft and deep. "I appreciate the pampering, but after so many years in that damned suit, being confined to a chair…well it just feel quite right."

The doctor gave a mournful smile. "Herr Porter," she began, "I am amazed that you are able to even sit upright after what you just went through. I am certain walking can wait at least a few more hours, for the ADAM to fully heal all of the internal damage." She gave a solemn smile, "You are lucky to be alive, you know that don't you?"

Porter could only smile. "Of course. And I'm thanking you for every minute for it."

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Captain Kombes sat at his desk, his face in his hands. Fat stacks of paper cluttered the aged wood, novels worth of briefings and reports. A thick manila folder was the current source of his anguish, its contents splayed out atop all others. Airtight alibis, faultless forgeries, false ID's; everything a person needed to disappear back into society. Everything that these people, his prisoners, deserved. And he was to turn over copies to the CIA, doom them to a life of observation, tracking, cataloguing. If their actions were deemed suspect enough, if they were labeled hazards, then that was it. In a heartbeat, they'd be gone, no trace left, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that that day would come. They'd be quietly erased from American society and forgotten.

That was what had cost him more sleep than anything else. With shaking hands, he snapped the folder shut and slid it into a desk drawer; the copies could wait, at least for a few more days. A cynical half-laugh passed through his lips; he needed time to crush his conscience before he could play Judas. He tried to focus on the good that they had done thus far; returning those little girls to their families, giving Sigma, no, Porter, back his life . Yet all of it paled in comparison to what was now asked of him. What duty to his country now demanded of him.

With a sigh, he locked the drawer shut. He could wait a few more days to put the blood of innocents on his hands.

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Charles Milton Porter slept better than he had in a decade that night, his dreams quiet for the first time in just as long. As he slept, his dreams turned once more to Pearl, of love lost to the fires of war and ravages of time. But he did not dream of those times. Visions of happier times played before his eyes, of quiet evenings on the banks of the Thames, of their cruise across the Atlantic. Of their wedding. And for a time, Charles Milton Porter was happy, a smile spreading across his weathered face.

As silently as he could, Subject Delta slowly entered the room. He stepped with care, his every footfall a resounding thud if he didn't. In the silence and the dark, he looked upon the form of a man who mere hours ago had been a mirror image of himself. He had always wondered what he would've looked like beneath the steel and brass and glass, and looking now upon Porter's form, he had his answer. Before him was flesh and bone, a battered man with patchwork scars and a story behind every cut, but a man nonetheless. And that fact tore at his soul. It was a hot knife twisted in his heart to look upon the man who had been Sigma and know that he could never have that. Ten years of death had stolen that chance of normalcy from him. It was an unspoken truth, a grim twist of fate that everyone knew but refused to face him with. He knew what awaited him beneath the helmet. He knew the monster he had become, the face of death that rode atop his body, more machine than man. This body, this freedom, was not for him. It never could be. No, all that awaited Subject Delta was another death, to die as he had lived, cold and alone, a tool to be used and then discarded.

Hands trembling, he looked upon the sleeping form of his comrade, the normalcy that was lost to him. All that was left to him was death, another death as slave, as a tool. And this time, there was no coming back. There were no Vita-Chambers for him to play Lazarus with, no way for him to resurrect back into this broken form. He was an expendable piece of flesh and metal, a dog to sic on whatever enemy his master deemed. How many of his enemies had been his own? How many fights had he fought for his own sake, for his own reasons?

He knew the answered to that already. He had stopped existing for his own sake the day he had been locked into the suit, robbed of his memories, his face, his very identity. His life stolen from him and twisted to another's purposes. Subject Delta shuddered as another convulsion wracked his body, agony searing through his veins until with shaking hands he was able to inject another dose of Tenenbaum's cure. It was a grim reminder of what little time he truly had left, and it hardened his heart. Two lives lived, and what did he have to show for it? A pitiful existence as a thug and a crook on the surface world, if Poole was to be believed, and then years as the army's dog. He'd lived a few short months as a hero in Rapture, the brave Johnny Topside, and then the shackles had gone right back on. He'd been a monster, a mindless golem of flesh and steel made only to kill. And he'd been good at it. So good that his darling "daughter" had brought him back for a repeat performance, had him pave a road of bodies to reach her. And then came Tenebuam's requests, and then Carnegie's.

With a shudder, Subject Delta left the room. He was tired. Tired of playing the butcher, the soldier, the pawn for people who cared nothing for him. He was tired of seeing what it cost him, the things he had lost, and how little it had given him. He had lived two lives as a slave, but this time, he vowed, he would die as a man.

He was done dancing to the tune of another, done living as a dog, a slave. He would never bow to the will of another again. And God help the man who expected him to.

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Morning came painfully quickly, and all too soon the prison had resumed its normal cycles. Tests were performed, the survivors of Ryan's nightmare interrogated, made to cooperate in cracking the secrets of their old hell.

For Eleanor Lamb, it was both a blessing and a curse. As far as the soldiers and the horrid Dr. Adler were concerned, she was nothing but a teenage girl, innocence stolen by Rapture, but largely ignorant of its workings. How little they truly knew. She spent her days largely in solitude, now that the little ones had been returned to their homes. She was happy, and yet, at the same time, she could feel a hole in her heart. She had lost her purpose, her mission, and nothing quite seemed right anymore. She needed guidance; she needed her Father.

Winding through the halls of their prison like a ghost, her eyes glanced over the scenes that played before her. Auntie Grace sat at Mr. Porter's bedside, talking animatedly with him; it seemed that once reunited with his voice, the two had found common ground. Her face fell slightly when their words met her ear, and she realized what that common ground was; loss. The place seemed so empty, so lifeless without the children. Tenebaum and Amir worked under the watchful eyes of the soldiers and Dr. Adler, picking apart one machine after the next, with Carnegie consulting. Billy Parson sat comforting his mother, Jack Ryan and his daughters together in another room under the watchful eyes of the guards.

At last, she reached the corner Father had seemingly claimed. He sat still as a statue, the aged and fraying pages of a newspaper in his hands, trembling. She'd heard the story of that newspaper from Carnegie, heard what it had told. What it had done to Father. It gave her one more reason to want to burn Stanley Poole to a crisp. For a time, she simply watched. His voice had been stolen from him, and his face made a blank mask, but she could feel the agony, the rage, that tore through his soul. Enough of their empathetic connection remained for that. It frightened her.

"Father," she began, voice tremulous. She stood in the doorway awkwardly. "May, may I come in?"

Her voice seemed to rouse him from his reverie, and turning slowly, the Big Daddy turned to face her, his glass face blank as ever. He sat for a moment, in silence, looking over her, before simply turning back to face the paper, as if she'd been nothing but a passing breeze.

Eleanor's heart skipped a beat.

"Father?" she quested, in disbelief. "It, its me."

Silence was her only answer. Her Protector's back remained turned, and her heart cracked. She couldn't take this. All of the pain and strife of the past months caught her in a wave, and she felt her knees go weak.

"Father? Please. I, I need to talk to talk to you. I need your help. I don't know what to do. "

Biting back tears, she could only watch as the Big Daddy slowly rose to his feet, gently replaced the newspaper in a storage pocket on his suit, and left the room in silence. Eleanor Lamb's world shattered in a heartbeat, and shaking she sank to the ground. Back to the wall, she held her head in her hands and cried. None of it made sense.

What had changed? What had she done? He had been her rock, her compass, her conscience, and now he wouldn't even look at her. Her mind raced, wild thoughts and fears spiraling out of control until the tap of footsteps on the tile caught her attention.

"Well, if you ask me it's about time," Alice said, arms folded across her chest.

"I, I beg your pardon?"

Alice met her gaze coolly, one eye permanently hiding behind a curtain of raven black hair. "You heard me."

Eleanor stifled her sob and rose to her feet. "What do you mean about time," she hissed, anger seeping into her tone.

The other Big Sister was unimpressed. "I meant exactly what I said. Its about time Daddy saw you for what you are. All you do is hurt him. You don't deserve him."

Alice's words cut like knives, and Eleanor could feel the anger rising within her. She felt the fire begin to stir upon her fingertips, but willed it to die; it'd serve no one if their jailors found them out to be something more than a pair of teenagers. Distantly, she remembered this girl. Memories of a sobbing Little Sister standing astride her Daddy's broken body, and Father putting himself between her and the Splicers. Her lips curled slightly.

"You don't exactly have much room to talk, Alice." She spat the name with venom she didn't knew she had possessed.

Alice's brow twitched ever so slightly, a mad glint in her one visible eye for a split second before she took a deep breath to compose herself. "All you do is take," she volleyed back. You take, and you beg, and he bows to your every request, and do you know what it got him?"

"Nothing but misery, that's what! Do you have any idea what he went through trying to find you? And what's the thanks he gets? You leave him to rot back down in that hell!"

Eleanor Lamb's retort died in her throat. Alice's acid tongue had delivered with it an epiphany. What had Father ever asked of her? He'd given up everything for her, his whole life, and what had she ever done for him in return? She'd gotten him a bullet through the head and another slow death. The tears returned. Alice ranted on, her one visible eye slowly reddening.

"You have no idea what you put him through! What he gave up for you! He, he slaved for you, bled for you, died for you! You were his whole world, and you didn't give a damn about him!"

Eleanor had had enough. Wiping the tears from her face, she rose to her feet and glared at her opposite number. There was a time she would've pitied the girl, but not tonight. Not after what she'd said.

"Jealous much?" she asked, mockingly casual.

The shriek Alice loosed was as piercing as any screamed in Rapture, and in the blink of an eye, she'd closed the distance between them, her eyes ablaze. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, knuckles whiter than bone, with smoke curling out from the gaps between her fingers.

"You have no idea what its like," the girl spat, ruby lips curled into a snarl. "No idea how it is to go through life knowing that, no matter what, you'll always be second best! You didn't spend 10 years as someone's tool, someone's puppet, and then have it all thrown back in your face! Every single failure, every monstrous thing you ever did, all coming back in a rush!" Tears freely streamed down Alice's face, tiny trails of crystal down porcelain flesh, and still she spoke.

"So jealous? Jealous doesn't even begin to cover it! You don't deserve to be loved the way he loves you, to have him protect you. Where's my unconditional love? Where's my guardian angel? Why, why won't he love me?"

Her rage was spent, and all that was left to Alice was sorrow. Sobs crashed upon her form like a waves on the shore, grinding her anger and pain away until nothing was left but a hole in her heart.

Eleanor Lamb was silent as the grave as Alice's words echoed through her head.

"I don't deserve him either," she said at last, in a voice barely more than a whisper. She gave a bitter laugh. "I guess he finally realized that."

Alice stifled her sobs for a time, and met Eleanor's eyes with her own puffy red pair.

"I wanted to hate you," she confessed, voice still tremulous. "From the moment I learned who you were, and what that meant for me, I hated you, hated what you stood for. I dreamed of this, of you being some cruel and selfish bitch, and Daddy leaving you behind. Of finally loving me like he loved you." He voice was small and meek, her eyes downcast. "But, now that I'm here, now that I've seen you. I don't know what to think. We've both lost him, now."

With a heavy heart, Eleanor Lamb had to admit that she was right; she'd taken her rock, her anchor, for granted. And now he was lost to her.

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"Dr. Adler,"

The name left a bad taste in her mouth, but Brigid Tenenbaum fought the rising bile in her throat. This was important.

The aging German stopped his steady hobble down the hall and turned to face the scientist. Tenenbaum continued.

"I noticed that the nurses were restocking the operating theater. A follow up for Sigma?"

The old Nazi merely delivered one of his sickeningly sweet smiles, yellowed teeth peeking out from behind his lips. "No, nothing to worry about, my dear. Simply a stabilization procedure for Subject Delta. Based off of the data collected from the operations on Sigma, a few strategic injections should at the very least ease our metal friend's pain."

Tenenbuam fought to keep her face level. "I see," she answered coolly. "In that case, I'd be happy to assist. It is my area of expertise, after all."

Adler gave a disconcerting chuckle. "Oh, that will not be necessary, Brigid. We have things well under control. It is a simple procedure, and surely your talents are better put to use elsewhere." Glancing at his wristwatch, the old man shook his head. "My, my, how time does get away from us." He flashed one last unsettling smile towards his former assistant. "Do have a pleasant day, doctor. I'll check on you later."

With that, Adler continued on his way, and Tenenbaum's fears were confirmed. She had seen the equipment they had been rolling in, and she knew how Adler worked. He wasn't planning on stabilizing Delta; he was preparing to cut him open. His sweetly phrased denial of her request to assist all but confirmed it. Sweat beading on her brow, the doctor hurried back to Carnegie and the rest of the survivors. They were out of time.

Hey all. Apologies for the delays. I've given up on any kind of time table/chapter cap for finishing this. It'll be done when its done, damn it! The confrontation between Alice and Eleanor was fun to write, so I do hope everyone enjoyed it. Please review. In other news, my deepest condolences to any and all affected by Hurricane Sandy, and to any and all American readers 18 or up, go vote today!