"The conversion of the Little Ones proceeds apace. Soon they will finish the conditioning and be paired with their Big Daddy protectors. One thing though, one of the Gatherer candidates? She is... strange. The others, they run, and dance, and shout, and play, but she... She just sits and stares out the window at some crabs. Sometimes she draws. I can never make sense of what the drawings are. Perhaps she is traumatized? She was missing an arm, though the records of her and whatever accident caused this seem to have been lost. It grew back after the implantation of course, but that's not the point. I brought it up with Suchong, but he didn't care as long as the conditioning took. I'm not sure it will. She's staring at me now. Those... those are not the eyes of a child." - Dr Brigid Tenenbaum, PhD.

Yet Another Post-GM Reborn Taylor Fic. (Worm/Bioshock)
(because I wasn't shameless enough already)

I watched, safe in my vent, as the stranger quickly looted the bodies of those he'd killed. He was nondescript, with short, brown hair and wearing a plain zip-up jersey and jeans that were a little bloodstained. Finished, he walked towards the door of what had been the Kashmir Restaurant. He bounced a bloody wrench in his hand. As he passed me, I pulled back into the vent.

I had become all too aware of my value in the eyes of Rapture's "citizens". Little Sisters like me produced ADAM, a valued and addictive chemical that allowed the user to rewrite their own genetic code.

My left arm twitched. The arm I'd lost to Scion had grown back, after my conversion. Now, any injury healed so quickly it might as well have not happened.

With the stranger now out of sight, I turned and moved back down the vents. There were food dispensers at the center of the vent system and I was hungry.

-=o0o=-

"Lalala..." I looked up from my meal as another Little Sister popped out of a vent. She, like any Little Sister (including myself), had pale greenish skin, dark circles around her eyes, which glowed a uniform yellow. On top of that, her voice had an odd reverb, as though something not quite human was singing along with her. Rosalind though had brown hair, unlike my black, and her dress, though stained, was pale blue. She carried some kind of fusion of a gun and an oversized needle, a bottle filled a red glowing liquid attached to it.

"Hello, Rosalind. Did you see many angels today?" I asked.

"Oh yes. Me and Mr B saw some sleeping when we were out on our walk. Some people talked to Mr B, and then they had a nap right in the middle of the hallway! They're so silly." She giggled. I hid my wince by taking another bite of my plain oatmeal.

The Little Sisters all underwent a form of mental conditioning. Because of this, they all lived in a fantasy world, where things were idealized. From what I'd learned from them, instead of the deteriorated, dirty and bloodstained walls and floors, they saw pristine marble floors and pillars, velvet curtains and silver fittings. Rapture's twisted citizens became fancily dressed masquerade ball-goers, and Big Daddies became gallant knights in armor. Pools of blood became piles of rose petals, and corpses... well, the Little Sisters saw sleeping angels.

For better or worse, the conditioning hadn't taken for me, though I played along.

I came back to the present to find that the room had filled with more girls. Rosalind had finished eating and was now doodling over the wall, while several others were sitting at my table. A few seemed to be trying to construct a block tower for the umpteenth time, while some had appropriated a skipping rope and were meticulously chanting the latest variation of the skipping song.

I looked down at my oatmeal and sighed. Cold. The stuff was tolerable hot, but cold? Perhaps it was my little-girl fussiness kicking in but cold oatmeal was utterly disgusting. I put it to the side and surveyed the girls.

2, 4, 6, 8... I counted mentally. 14, 16, 18... 19, 20. I added myself last and frowned. I counted again, to be sure, then started ticking off who was present.

"Hey," I called, "Where's Leta?"

The girls quieted then Adelaide (a small curly-haired blonde) spoke; "Hey yeah, Leta didn't come in yet."

My heart clenched in my chest. "Does anyone know where she is?"

"She was at the doctor's before, with her Mr B." This came from one of the quieter ones, Veronica.

The doctor's meant the Medical Pavilion, which wasn't far away. She should be back by now unless it was taking time to find her "angels" to harvest. Or she'd been taken.

"I'm going out," I said, getting up. This netted me a chorus of "Okay"s, "See you later, Taylor"s and "Bye"s that I absently acknowledged. I pulled a knife out from under my mattress, strapping it on. I forwent my own harvesting needle, taking only the bottle of red glowing ADAM. Instead, I picked up a speargun, also from under my bed.

I then jumped into the vent, ready to begin my search. I wouldn't fail another one. I wouldn't.

-=o0o=-

Bugs were few and far between in Rapture, mostly due to its nature as an enclosed space, but between the numerous corpses of splicers lying around and the sheer neglect Rapture was undergoing, there were enough to work with. Mostly flies, excited over a number of new bodies found all over the place.

Seriously, it looked like another war had happened here.

"Eeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahh!"

I stiffened, then rushed through the vent system towards the scream, heart pounding. No no no no no!

My insects swept ahead of me, outlining the situation. A large metal lump on the ground. A small, trembling figure trying to bum-shuffle away. A tall figure, clawed fingers reaching towards her.

NO!

My bugs swarmed him, getting in his face, his eyes, his mouth. He coughed and swatted at them, momentarily distracted. I got to the vent putting down the speargun and lining up my shot. I'd put one in his head, and if I missed, I had a spare. If that missed, I'd... I'd think of something.

The sights wavered as I tried to calm my breathing.

"No, no, no, go 'way!" Leta cried.

"Come now darling, it's just you, me, and all the ADAM I can drink." the splicer leered from behind his mask as he reached to grab her arm. I centered his head in the sights, preparing to pull-

BANG!

Poor Leta was splattered with red as the splicer caught a bullet in the shoulder. He turned, and-

BANG!

-received a second one in the head, splattering his brains onto the floor behind him.

"Stay away from her or it is you who will be shot next!" A German accented voice came from above, on a balcony. I looked up, and saw Dr Tenenbaum there, a pistol in hand. The pistol was pointed at the door of the room, at the stranger I'd seen before.

He'd found some new gear since last I'd seen him. A handgun rested in a holster at his belt, next to his wrench. And a machine gun sat in his hands.

"Easy now Doctor, he's just looking for a wee bit of ADAM, just enough to get by." His voice had an Irish accent, and was kind of tinny? Hold on - I screwed up my eyes and looked closer. A flight of flies to investigate, and yes, the voice was coming from a radio on his belt on the far side.

"I'll not have him hurt my little ones!" Dr Tenenbaum and I had a... rocky relationship. She'd made us, what we were and I couldn't forgive her, but the girls had awakened some maternal instinct in her and she regretted it. She was the only one I could trust to help look after them. The emotion was real and I needed the help.

"It's okay, lad. That's not a child anymore, Dr Tenenbaum saw to that." The voice spoke and I bristled. The stranger -

"You better not hurt her!" Tenenbaum finished my thought, "Have you no heart?"

"That's a pretty serving coming from the girl who cooked up them creatures in the first place. Took fine little girls, and turned them into that, didn't ya?" The voice seemed unconvinced. It then began to say something in a lower volume, so I couldn't hear it. I frowned. I considered moving bugs to listen in, but that many would be noticed. Instead, I began to line up a shot on the stranger. If it looked like he was going to hurt Leta, he'd regret it.

He took a couple steps towards Leta, her curled up form still sobbing inconsolably.

"Here!" Tenenbaum called, holding up something red. "There is another way." She spoke, and tossed it at him. He caught it, and I saw it was a plasmid vial. My eyebrows raised on their own. Was this... the cure? She hadn't told me about it - I made her uncomfortable for some reason - but I knew she'd been working on something to undo our condition. Had she succeeded? And she was trusting it to this perfect stranger?

I looked back at him, catching him taking the needle out of his arm. He took a few steps towards Leta, and I brought the speargun back up. She shuffled back, pressing herself against a trunk to try and escape him. He reached for her (I gritted my teeth) and picked her up.

"No, no! No!" Leta beat at his wrist. My eyes widened as I saw the man's veins glow white. He put that hand on the top of Leta's head, and her veins glowed too. The glow was blinding for a second, and I looked away. I looked back to see the stranger had put Leta down.

"Thank you" she curtseyed and ran towards me.

"Leta! Leta!" I hissed, sticking an arm out.

She looked up to see me. "Big Sister!" she called. She grabbed my arm, and I pulled her up. Once she was in the vent, I pulled her along.

I stopped us in one of the wider and more well-lit spaces. "Leta!" I said, "I was so worried! Are you okay?" As I spoke I looked her over. I was surprised to find that she looked... normal. Not like a normal Little Sister, but like a normal child. Her skin tone had lost its green tinge and her eyes no longer glowed. They were normal blue eyes. She still had dark circles around her eyes, but it looked more like she'd stayed up all night, rather than like before where it'd looked like she'd had an accident with her mother's eyeliner. The cure... worked?

"I feel tired." Leta whined a bit, "But I'm okay! The man didn't hurt me." She didn't look injured, but with the regeneration Little Sisters possessed, it wouldn't show.

But the ADAM we produced came from a sea-slug implanted in our bodies. It was a symbiotic relationship, the slugs get fed, we get ADAM. But removing the slug always killed the host.

"Leta, I want you to go see Dr Tenenbaum, okay?" I was worried that this "Cure" plasmid might just spell a slower death for Leta.

"Okay, Big Sister" Leta took one of the branching vents, singing as she went. I watched her worriedly. Leta was one of the smallest Little Sisters, only five at implantation a year ago. I was... a little protective. If Tenenbaum screwed up the cure... we would have words.

-=o0o=-