Annette looked at the reports she had been given on her daughter. Taylor, her little girl, was alive. She closed her eyes for a moment. Ten years of searching, of grief and guilt, of spiraling debt all on a dim hope her daughter was alive. It had paid off. Her little girl was back.

She stared at the reports she had been given. Back but how? Taylor had passed out on the ground moments after Annette opened the door. The child in the basket on her back had refused to leave her side.

Both of them had that horrible pallor of gray that corpses had. And a light that drowned out the whites and other colors of their eyes until only it remained. Both with an echo to their voices that made them sound inhuman.

That wasn't even touching the weapons they had. A six year old with a massive syringe thing. Her own daughter with a giant needle and blade on each hand.

She read the reports again. Limbs so thin and long that the muscle barely could wrap around the bones and stretched until they were ready to pop. Bones that were too weak to hold her weight. Her blood test had come back with the machine having broken and the blood glowing of all things.

The other little girl with Taylor had buried herself in a cocoon of blankets and pillows and hissed at anyone who had tried to take her blood. It had been hard enough to just get the girl to the hospital and in her own room.

The sound of footsteps and someone sitting down beside her made her raise her head. "You must be Mrs. Hebert. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances but I am here to help." Miss Militia said. Annette had seen her a few times in the news and frankly wasn't sure why she was here though she had a sneaking suspicion.

"And how do you want to help?" She wished her voice hadn't been so bitter.

"I haven't seen the reports but I've seen the look in that little girl before. It's one I had when I was younger. These two have likely gone through hell. They both look like a biotinker played havoc on them. I was asked to pitch the wards to you. I do think that would be best for them. But I'm not going to try and push that on you. These two need therapy and likely a dozen surgeries. More than that though they need stability and right now I bet the last thing you want is for your daughter to be put into danger again." She took a pause and chuckled.

"And here I go about to pitch the Wards right after I said I wouldn't. We can help though, the PRT will be paying for both of their time here in the hospital. We will also be paying for a series of therapy sessions. There is more we'd be happy to do but we aren't going to force your child into this." As she said this a hand was placed on Annette's back. Annette nodded numbly.

oOo

The lights were too bright. That was the first thing she noticed as consciousness dragged her away from her dreams. Her eyes fluttered and she saw lights brighter than anything that had been in Rapture. She raised her hand to block the light only to feel it refuse. Pushing her eyes open she glanced down at herself. Bracelets kept her hands to the sides of the bed she laid in. Her diving suit had been replaced with some gown. More importantly her leg braces were gone.

Taylor tried to force herself not to panic at that. Walking without those was close to agony. She'd barely make it a dozen steps before her legs snapped or ripped. She tried to remember how she lost them.

She pressed her eyelids together and tried to retrace her steps. She had made it home. Rosie had been with her. And once she saw her mother she had… she had passed out. The bullets that had pierced her armor and skin had bleed her strength and her blood had leaked out of her body like a bottle with pinholes in it.

Rosie. Her eyes snapped back open and her head shot around looking for her Little Sister. No one else was in the small room with her. She was alone. She needed to find Rosie, she had to find Rosie. Her heart sped up as she began to feel physically sick.

The machines around her beeped and flashed and made so many horrible little noises. Nothing like the soft pleasant thrum of machinery or sound of tiny leaks that she had fallen asleep to for so many years. Her hands pulled on the bracelets. She needed to get Rosie and her braces.

Someone in white entered the room. "Ms. Hebert, it's alright, please relax." The person said as if that name meant anything to her and Taylor focused her eyes on her. Black hair like the unlit ocean, bony face, thin fingers.

"Where's Rosie?" Her voice screeched out like rusted cogs causing the woman to recoil from the near shriek. "Where is my Little Sister." She demanded yanking harder on the restraints feeling her skin bruise and heal as she yanked harder and harder. Her eyes began to ache and burn as the boiling heat of her anger flooded into them and spread like a oil over the yellow.

Two more people entered, these in heavy looking armor. The woman waved them off and spoke to them as she spoke more to her but Taylor didn't care. She needed to find Rosie, she had to find Rosie. Her hands were beginning to slow on the healing as she yanked harder and harder.

"She's in the next room, we just need you to answer some questions before we let you out." She said, raising her hands calmly. She opened her mouth to say more as Taylor heard the sound of a vent opening on the wall. Out of the darkness of the vent two small dots of lights appeared that grew larger as a girl with the color of a corpse peeked her head out of the vent with a wide smile

Rosie hopped out and fell on the floor with an "umph" She skipped over to Taylor and pushed herself up onto the bed. "Big Sister! There you are, you've been napping all day!" She said with that echo that made the nurse flinch back. A door opened revealing Taylor's mother and another of the odd armored people. "She ran through a… well I guess you found her." She said looking at her daughter and the Little Sister in her lap.

Taylor didn't have many memories of her mother. She had been younger in her memories. Less stress lines, less gray hairs, a face not so tight from grief and eyes that weren't stained red with tears. She had the same dark curly hair as Taylor and the same thin lipped face.

Taylor realized in her memories she had at some point forgotten the color of her mother's eyes. They were pretty. Not as nice as the pure endless yellow of her's and Rosie's but they were a nice deep brown. Had those been the color of Taylor's eyes?

She sat down besides Taylor and sat pressing her lips together until they went pale. The nurse seemed content to leave them alone now that Taylor wasn't trying to escape.

Taylor's mother rose and approached slowly, seemingly unsure what to say or do. Taylor opened and closed her mouth half a dozen times.

She had thought a long time on what she would say and do when she got home. Once it hadn't hurt to think about her that was. She wasn't sure what she expected in truth. She hadn't imagined this.

Her mother gave a small fragile smile, "Do you mind if I sit with you Taylor?"

She nodded, deciding she could trust her mother. She pursed her lips trying to find words as Rosie hummed and drew. Taylor tried to wrap her arms around Rosie but remembered the bracelets. She could snap them but it would be rather painful for her.

The woman in the white touched the numerous hateful machines that made such horrible sounds. "I'm sorry I took so long." Taylor finally said feeling some shame from how badly this reunion was going.

Annette gave a smile that gave more approval than any word could. It felt warm like a blanket or the taste of ADAM. "You have nothing to be sorry about, Sweetie. I'm glad you're back. I- I've missed you very much Taylor." She said her voice cracking more than Taylor's bones when she moved without her braces

"I'm so glad you're back. I've been looking for you for a long time. Ha, I never expected to see you just come knocking on our door." She leaned forward and moved a curl from the front of Taylor's face. Taylor's hair looked like a rat lived in it and was slick with grease, sweat, and her blood. Taylor's mother didn't seem to care. "And definitely not so tall or with another girl." She said and the statement came as a probing question. Rosie looked up from where she had curled up and was playing with some doll she had found. She looked nervously at Taylor's mother.

Taylor had to wonder what Rosie was seeing. Did she think she was still in Rapture? Taylor had told her stories of what little she could remember of the surface at night when Rosie couldn't sleep. But how much did Rosie believe in that? How did a pale gray story of a light in the sky compare to a fiery orb that blinded?

"I had a growth spurt." Taylor said feeling awkward not sure how girl's were supposed to grow. She couldn't remember any teenage girls in rapture before the Big Sisters. Was this not normal?

Annette gave a snort of laughter. "I noticed. I want you to know Taylor," Her hand reached out and touched Taylor's. She wanted to recoil from the touch, only Little Sister's touched her softly, but she let it happen. "I never stopped looking for you. I don't know where you were or what happened to you but I promise I was always looking. I promise we'll get through this." She said more to herself than Taylor.

Taylor wanted to say she never stopped trying to escape or trying to come home but that would be a lie, and lies were against the Rules. She had forgotten her mother. Her father. Her home. For a long time as a little sister her life had never existed before her arrival in Rapture.

"Thank you.' She said feeling that was wholly inadequate. "H-have you meet Rosie?" She asked as her Little Sister looked up to Taylor's mother and gave a shy wave putting her long thin lips into a modest smile.

Her mother nodded. "She's a sweetheart. She's been drawing pictures for me." She said and Taylor wondered what pictures had been drawn and what the contents were. How many were angels and Taylor making people into angels?

"Can I… get out of these?" She asked, figuring it would be rude to snap the chains and break her wrists.

"Just a little bit Little Owl." Her mother said then flinched at the nickname. Taylor's dim memories of owl's made her confused about that. With her gray skin and yellow eyes she looked more like an owl than she did as a child. "Some nice people have some questions to ask. Once that's done we can get you out of those."

At this the woman in white who had been rudely listening in the entire time went to go and get someone. A woman wearing a flag on her face entered and took a knife off her belt. Taylor's eyes stayed on the knife until it was laid down on a chair across the room.

"May I sit? I'm Miss Militia." The woman asks, her eyes crinkling. Taylor focused little on what her eyes did though and more on her body. Big Sister's rarely spoke with each other and rarely removed their suits. They had to speak with each other by movement and gestures. As a result Taylor had gotten very good at judging how a person moved and what their intentions were.

This woman was moving slowly, with carefully planned steps. She was trying to show she was harmless.

Taylor gave a slow nod as Rosie got off her lap and went on the floor where she could reach a vent quickly. Taylor felt proud of her sister for that.

The woman sat down and pressed her hands together. "Ms. Hebert, do you mind if I talk with you for a bit? I'm sure you're tired and have gone through a lot but it would be very helpful if you could answer these for us." She said,

Taylor gave a slow nod, her eyes flicking between where Rosie was and where the flag wearing woman was.

"Some simple questions first, can you tell me your name and the date?"

"Taylor, I don't know what day but the year is 1968." Taylor said not noticing the shocked look on her mother's face or the way the eyebrow on the woman rose meant she was curious. Splicers usually had eyebrows in odd spots so maybe it was normal for adults?

"Do you know where you were being kept?" The woman, Miss Militia, asked.

"Under the Atlantic in Rapture." Taylor replied evenly she was worried this wouldn't be close enough. Would she need to give the right coordinates? Did she want to? What if more people wanted to exploit Rapture?

"Ah… alright next question. Where did you get the equipment that you were wearing when your mother found you?"

"It was made for me. I can't walk without braces and the diving equipment helped me be more mobile." Taylor said.

"We'll try to get those back to you soon then. And the cage on the back?"

"For my Little Sisters. To move them around and protect them." At this Rosie smiled up at her from where she was hiding under the bed humming.

"How many little sisters did you have?"

"Just Rosie. The others were assigned multiple sisters but I was only assigned to her." Taylor said.

"When you say sisters what do you mean?"

Taylor paused. Did she tell them? About ADAM. About the slugs in her and Rosie's stomachs?

"We were the ones who were taken. We were… given Rules and made to help the city. We were… made to forget everything before." Her mother's hand tightened around her own. It felt nice.

"Do you know the name of the cape who kidnapped you?" She asked and Taylor was unsure how to answer. Cape? She had to think about who was responsible. There wasn't just one person but… she thought fondly of when her sisters had worked with the first invader. She had hidden but she could still smell the ADAM they split when they helped the man.

"Atlas."

"What happened to him?"

"Some of my other sisters worked with the Invader and they killed him."

"And that's when you escaped?"

Taylor gave a laugh. "No, I was only seven then."

"What happened after that?" Miss Militia said seeming to have thought the story ended then.

"I spent time with Mr. Bubbles until he fell asleep… he died and I got too big, I was around 12 then. Then I was found by Doctor Lamb who lied and promised to help." Taylor said bitterness crawling from her heart to her vocal cords. Lamb had promised and promised but had just made things worse. "She did more tests on me and soon after that I was given Rosie. I named her a few weeks after that."

"Was this normal to name your…little sister?"

"No, the others we rescued kept their names. And we kept our names in the orphanage."

"...What do you mean rescued? And how many were there?"

"We would leave when the sky was blinking with stars and look for girls who needed to be rescued. I'm not sure the total number but… maybe fifty of us at first? Then when we were Big sisters there were a dozen of us left, and we rescued maybe three each? So…" Taylor counted in her head, her education having ended once she had made it to rapture. "Thirty six little sisters, thirty seven with Rosie." Most of them had been taken by the invader. He had done something to make their skin wrong and their eyes dark and lacking. Others had died or been killed by splicers. How many were left? Just Rosie?

There was silence for a time after she finished speaking. "Alright Taylor. I have some more questions but only one more for today. Then you can have some rest. Do you know why Atlas did this to you, did he ever give a reason?" She said gesturing at Taylor's body. Her legs bent inwards because otherwise it hurt. Her to long and skinny fingers. Her skin gray and dead and her perfect beautiful glowing eyes.

She took a long time to answer.

"To collect ADAM."

/\\\

AN: Thanks to BigBadBen for the help!

Thoughts and criticism is welcome!