It required some apartment scavenging, but Julie managed to find some food that she ate as quickly and carefully as she could. She still felt a bit hungry. Weird. She'd gotten hungry pretty quickly.
Must have been all the damage she had to repair from the Big Sister fight.
Julie went looking for some more food. Along the way she killed more splicers and avoided a Big Daddy.
Except even after she found more food she still felt hungry. This was starting to get worrying. Being active always got her hungry, but never this quickly.
Maybe she was being paranoid, but she wanted to make sure she wasn't experiencing some sort of weird side effect. "Ma, you there?"
"Yes, did you find the bathysphere station?"
"Nah, I'm still getting food."
"You must have worked up quite an appetite."
Julie bit her lip. "Yeah…Actually, I'm eating a lot more than I would be usually. I'm kind of worried I might be having a bad reaction or something."
"ADAM doesn't increase metabolism…unless…What gene tonics do you have that are active?"
"Uh…Hold on." Scout thought about what she'd seen in the gene bank. "Sports Boost, Something about messing up machines, Weapon Jockey, Eve Saver, something about cameras not noticing me, Eve Link, Short Circuit 2 (not 1), Big Game Hunter, Booze Hound (No, I haven't drunk any booze.), Extra Nutrition 2 (and only 2), and…something about regenerating EVE."
"Vhat?!"
Julie winced. Extra strong accent. Not good. "That bad?"
"Was it called Metabolic EVE?" demanded Ma.
Julie nodded. "Yeah! That's what it was! Was that a bad idea?"
"Where did you even-The Metabolic EVE tonic was discontinued while still within the testing phase because of the side effects: It causes the body's metabolism to skyrocket to the point that one has to constantly eat or risk starving. Depending on how often one uses plasmids, even that might not be enough to prevent starvation."
"Oh…" Yeah, that was bad. "Uh…So avoid plasmids until I get to a Gene Bank?"
"Yes, it would be better if you avoided plasmid use entirely as that would return your metabolism to normal, but I recognize that is difficult in this environment."
"I'll stick to telekinesis." That was easy and barely affected her. "Hey, what about Extra Nutrition?"
"I'm sure it's why you're doing as well as you are."
"No, I mean what if I got the other two? Would that like cancel it out?"
Ma was quiet for a moment. "It might, but don't try it unless you have all three Extra Nutritions. Until then you need to keep Metabolic EVE repressed. Do you understand?"
Julie's stomach growled. "Yeah, I understand."
