Elizabeth VIII
Deja Vu is the sensation of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time.
This is what Elizabeth experienced when her eyes started fluttering open. Only to snap them shut again with a pained groan as the thin beams of light in the room turned into sharp shards of glass that buried into her brain.
"Oooowwww," she moaned, one hand unconsciously going to cover her eyes as a wave of nausea hit her stomach.
"Quit your complaining," a sharp voice snapped. "You're lucky to be alive, start acting like it. Now open your eyes."
Elizabeth's hand was pulled away from her face, her eyes automatically opening at the sensation, and Tenenbaum was there with a small flashlight.
"Hold still," the older woman grumbled, examining Liz's pupils. "How are you feeling?"
"Like crap," Elizabeth said, only now registering that her entire body felt like one big bruise. "Any chance I could get some painkillers?"
"You're already on some. Lean forward, I need to check the back of your head," Tenenbaum replied. "And I will not give you any more until your next scheduled dose; I refuse to let you turn into some useless, idle addict. Pull up your shirt."
Liz complied, wincing at the patchwork of multi-colored mottled bruises that covered her abdomen. Tenenbaum smeared a salve over the skin, her fingertips gently prodding at some sensitive areas.
"Your back looks even worse," the scientist commented when a poke to a particularly sensitive bruise earned her a sharp intake of breath.
"You've been checking me over in my sleep?"
"No, you've been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past few days. This is the third time we've had this conversation."
"What?" Elizabeth exclaimed, shooting up in what she now realized was an infirmary bed. She instantly regretted that though, when the dizziness hit her like a freight train. She sunk back down, "Oooohhhhh."
"You're recovering from a concussion and lucky to be alive," Tenenbaum repeated. "So don't go pushing your body just yet. Do you even remember what happened?"
Liz closed her eyes, trying to think. The last thing she could recall was... "A Big Daddy!"
"Mmmhmmm," the older woman nodded. "You had a nasty run-in with one of our patrolling units. Thankfully, several of the Little Ones were near enough to hear the commotion. Two distracted the Big Daddy while another pair and, more importantly, the supplies you scavenged to safety."
Memories trickled back at the scientist's words. The elevator! The dash for safety! The Big Daddy! The drill! The female splicer!
"Wait! I had a woman with me!" she exclaimed. "Where is she?"
"The splicer? Oh, yes, the Little Ones found and saved her as well," Tenenbaum said. "I am admittedly confused as to why you risked your life to bring her there but, nevertheless, we treated her wounds, and she is now in one of the detox rooms. Perhaps she'll be a success? If nothing else, it was nice of you to bring me a new test subject."
"I want to see her," Elizabeth demanded, trying to force herself to sit back up.
"No no no," the older woman tutted, pushing Liz back down. "You still need to rest, and, besides, the splicer is not in any condition to be viewed right now. Detox is a grueling process, highly unpleasant, and you do not want to see it."
"I insist!"
Tenenbaum shook her head, "We'll see. Now, it is time for you to go back to sleep."
Before Elizabeth could protest, the scientist injected something into her IV. Within a few moments, her eyes fluttered and she grew drowsy. Before she went fully under, Liz looked around the room, desperately hoping to see Booker watching over her but, once again, she was alone. Her eyes shut, and sleep came once more.
"Ugh," Elizabeth grumbled as she came back to consciousness. There was a foul taste in her mouth, and her head still hurt. She smacked her lips, scrunched up her face, and looked around for something to drink.
"Welcome back," Tenenbaum said, passing her a glass.
Elizabeth took a sip and grimaced before taking another sip; it was some type of weak juice, not very tasty, but at least it got rid of the nasty taste in her mouth. Once the liquid started settling in her stomach, her headache started disappearing too.
"I feel a lot better than last time I woke up," she noted.
"The fact that you even remember last time proves you're on the mend," the older woman replied, once more checking Liz's bruises. "These have healed nicely. You are a strange girl, you know?"
"What do you mean?"
"Between surviving multiple plasmoids in your body with no discernable side effects and a remarkable resistance to EVE addiction, the injuries you sustained during your little adventure should have killed," Tenenbaum explained as she checked Elizabeth's eyes once more. "And yet, here you are, your concussion already healed."
Elizabeth pulled away from the bright light shining in her eyes. "Good, does that mean I can see the woman I brought in?"
Tenenbaum considered the request for a moment, checking over the last of Liz's injuries, "I suppose that would be alright, though I still don't think you'll like what you see, but you'll need to get cleaned up first."
"Fine."
An hour later, along with a quick shower and meal, Tenenbaum was being led through the narrow, poorly lit hallways of the safe house.
"What you'll see will disturb you," the older woman warned. "And the progress is somewhat disturbing, but you must try to hold yourself together. Do you understand?"
Elizabeth mulled over the question for a moment. What would she see in the detox room? As positive as her intentions may be, there was undoubtedly something eerie about the older woman. And the way she spoke of the splicers undergoing the detox process was... disturbing. She spoke about them less like they were people and more as if they were subjects in one of her experiments.
"They are experiments," Booker said from his place by her side. "Tenenbaum is experimenting to see can turn splicers back into humans. A noble enough goal, but she said so herself -it's not going well."
Elizabeth did not acknowledge her father's specter. To do so would be to acknowledge that there was a very real possibility that she delivered that woman to her heath like a cow to a butcher.
'She would have died anyway,' she told herself. 'Be it from hunger or violence or exposure or withdrawal, she would have died sooner or later. At least this way she has a chance.'
The thought offered her little comfort.
"GAAAAHHHHH!"
Liz jumped at the scream the echoed through the safe house. She'd heard them before when she first began working with Tenenbaum, and now she was about to get a close-up look at who was making them.
"We're almost there," the woman said. "Brace yourself."
Tenenbaum led Elizabeth past a series of bolted doors, each with a small, thin window built-in. Liz fought back the temptation to peek through one of them, still not sure she wanted to face what was making those terrible sounds just here. She was so distracted by these thoughts that she very nearly bumped into her companion's face as Tenenbaum stopped to unlock one of the doors.
When it finally opened, just a smidge, the older woman nodded inside and said, "Have a look."
"You can still turn around, kiddo," Booker whispered.
'No, I can't because. If I did, I'd be lost.'
The room was small, barely larger than a closet, and bathed in low red light from a single bolt. The only furniture in the room was an inclined hospital bed and, in that bed, was the splicer Elizabeth had brought in. She was tied to the bed with four-point restraints with two extra straps across her chest and legs, an IV hooked up to her left arm, and a blood transfusion bag hooked up to the right one. The blood bag was unusual, Elizabeth noted. The bag and line into the arm looked normal enough, but there was also an empty second line that led into the transfusion bag which itself was hooked up to a strange, boxy little machine.
For a moment, Liz assumed the woman was asleep or otherwise drugged into unconsciousness but when the door creaked, her head snapped in their direction and the woman began howling with rage.
"She isn't sedated?" Elizabeth asked, alarmed.
"One of the side effects of their addiction is a resistance to sedatives," Tenenbaum explained with a shrug. "It would take over double the normal dose to be effective and, quite frankly, there are many better uses for those drugs than wasting them on someone we don't know will survive the detox process."
Liz wanted to snap at the woman for her lack of care, but the words died on her tongue when a blonde Little Sister carrying a massive syringe pushed her way past their legs.
"Excuse me, Pretty Lady," the Little Sister chirped. "Excuse me, Mama Bri."
"What is she-"
"Just watch," Tenenbaum instructed. "This is a major component of the detox process."
Elizabeth could only watch on in silent shock and horror as the Little Sister climbed up onto the bed and, paying no attention to the splicer's struggling, neatly inserted the syringe tip into her median cubital vein. She pulled the plunger on the syringe, filling the barrel with dark red blood. Her knowledge of anatomy and biology playing in the back of her mind, Elizabeth couldn't help but flinch.
'That's a lot of blood. What is she doing with it?'
As if the Little Sister could sense her question, she hopped back down off the bed and scampered over to the strange little machine. The child inserted the syringe needle down into a small opening at the top of the machine and released the blood into it.
"All done," she said, talking past Liz and Tenenbaum without a second word. "So much to do today!"
"It occurred to me that, if Little Sisters could harvest ADAM from the corpses of dead splicers then there should be a way to remove it from the blood of still-living ones," the scientist explained. "The process still needs a bit of fine-tuning but, after the first few failures, I realized one of the biggest problems is keeping the blood supply at an acceptable level."
From behind the pair, a gaunt older man carrying a first aid kit came forward and slipped silently into the room. The splicer swore and spat at the man, struggling furiously against her binds, as the man wiped away the trickle of blood from the splicer's inner elbow and placed a bandage on the injection site. Then he walked over to the stage machine and flipped a switch. Slowly, blood was pulled through the line and back into the woman's body.
"So the idea is to remove the blood little by little, put it through a purification system to remove all traces of ADAM, and then feed it back into the body," Tenenbaum continued. "It isn't pleasant. Even with the symptoms of withdraw setting in, there is the strain on the body of constantly having your blood removed, but some of my new assistants do their best to keep the splicers alive while Little Ones work to remove the ADAM."
"What do you do about the cold?" Elizabeth asked, still trying to process what she'd just learned.
When the question earned her a raised eyebrow, she continued, "You mentioned the stress on the body caused by the detox system but one of the side effects of having blood removed from the system and then reintroduced is that the blood becomes cold. And that, in turn, makes the recipient feel cold, especially considering that we are at the bottom of the ocean."
"The rooms are heated, just like the rest of the safe house," Tenenbaum said with a shrug, lighting a cigarette. She offered one to Elizabeth but, despite being sorely tempted, waved it away.
'Note to self, check the pockets of my dirty overalls to see if my carton and lighter are still there.'
"But what about blankets? Hot water bottles?" she asked.
Tenenbaum gave her a long, almost pitying look. "Perhaps you've misunderstood me, Fräulein Elizabeth. I do not wish death for these unfortunate souls... but I do expect it. Supplies are limited here and there are others with more pressing needs for such things. They are giving adequate nutrition, water, and medical care; that is more than they're getting out there."
"No, that isn't enough," Elizabeth said, shaking her head. "They aren't animals, Tenenbaum! They deserve some blankets at least! I'll go back out and get them myself if we don't have enough but if you're going to try to help these people then we should at least treat them humanely."
"Ach du lieber Himmel! You are a very frustrating girl, do you know that?" the older woman growled. She waved her hand dismissively, "Quatsch! Fine, I'll see what I can do. Maybe the Little Ones can pick some up on their next scouting trip. I'm not making any promises though. Food and medical supplies are still more important than blankets for splicers who will likely die."
It wasn't perfect but Liz knew it was the best she was going to get.
"Agreed," she said with a shake of her head.
"Well, now that your curiosity is satisfied let us return to what is actually important -retrieving Subject Delta."
"You'll be happy to know that, aside from some minor cracks and dents, all the supplies you managed to scavenge survived your run-in with the Big Daddy," Tenenbaum explained as they returned to the observation window. "I suppose I should thank you for the extra items. We didn't need most of it but it is always nice to have more and some of it I didn't even think of stockpiling."
Elizabeth peered out into the murky depths of the ocean floor. Out there, alone, still sat Subject Delta -alone and silent.
'I wonder if he is lonely,' she thought. 'Such a silly question. We don't even know if he has any consciousness left.'
"A man I knew taught me it was always better to have more than less," she said. "He'd take anything he stumbled across so long as it wasn't nailed down, even if he didn't need it."
"You act like I ate food out of garbage cans," Booker complained, rolling his eyes.
"You did!" Liz shot back. He also ate off the ground like a wild animal. It had horrified her the first time she saw it but now she could only think back on it with amusement.
"What?" Tenenbaum asked, confused.
"We needed that ammunition! We never know what kind of guns would be available!" Booker continued. "It saved our asses more than once!"
Elizabeth shook her head, "Nothing, just talking to myself."
The older woman's eyes slide from Liz to the space behind her where Booker was and then back to her face. "If you say so."
"So we have what we need to get the undersea retrieval arm up and running again?" Liz asked, changing the subject.
"...Yes, everything is ready for another attempt."
"Then let's go."
Slowly but steadily the giant metal arm reeled in the massive mechanical man, pulling him across the seabed and into a sealed chamber. Holding her breath, Elizabeth hurriedly pulled down the switch, sealing off and emptying the chamber of water.
"We got him!" she exclaimed.
"Let's get Subject Delta into the Vita Chamber," Tenenbaum said. "It is time for him to wake up."