Part 9: Death and Life

As blackness swallowed him, body and mind, David's mind went back to Pauper's Drop. It could have been any other day. Two weeks had passed since Alice's disappearance, her mother, half mad with grief, had moved away, hoping to find her lost daughter. That day was the last day David would spend as a child, the last day in a home, the last day as someone's son.

He could hear them coming up the stairs. The homes in the Drop had all the insulation of a paper hat, and sound carried from one building into the next. His mother must have heard them as well as she went about cooking dinner. Why hadn't she run? There were three, men by the sound of their voices, drunk and spliced to the gills.

Instead, she was pulling something from the oven when they kicked the door in, knocking it from its hinges. Before she even had a chance to scream, they had her thrown to the ground. One Splicer carried a crowbar. There was a sickening crack when the metal crashed into her skull.

This wasn't how it really happened. David hadn't been home, he'd been searching the streets for Alice, like he'd done every day since she'd vanished. By the time he'd gotten home, his mother was already dead, lying on the floor, blood polling under her head. She'd been staring at the door, and her eyes had seemed to lock upon his, transfixing him with their empty gaze. The Splicers had ripped her dress off, thrown it aside like a piece of trash.

When he'd gone to the police, they'd told him to stay there. In the end it had taken them three hours to get there. Three hours in that cold, empty apartment with his dead mother. Before he'd gone to get help, David had put a blanket over her body, hoping to provide some kind of dignity. More than once, he thought he heard her call out to him, a muffled whisper or groan that sounded like thunder in the silent apartment. Someone had later explained that it was just gas escaping her body, like burps, sounding as though they were breathing or moaning.

If he'd been there, if she couldn't have called out. Instead he'd been looking for Alice. He'd left his mother alone and she'd been raped and killed. And there was nothing he could do about it. In return, David was left alone. He had no other family in Rapture, no neighbors who would take him in. Rather than go to an orphanage, he lived on the streets.

By day he would scrounge for food in trash bins, steal what he could, and avoid the police who wanted to toss him into an orphanage. By night, he would flee from Splicers, drunks and the other homeless, all out to take what little he had left. If it hadn't been for Cassidy, for Andrew Ryan, David would have died, starved or murdered and left to rot in the street. However, Cassidy had found him, a pair of goons slipping a black bag over his head and hauling him away to enter into Ryan's secret group of problem solvers.

With a hoarse scream David came back to consciousness, back to the present. His next breath was too deep and his ribs gave him a sharp reminder that they were still broken. As he fumbled with the clasps on his helmet, David could feel his gag reflex going into overtime. No sooner had the helmet clanged to the floor than his stomach heaved. Of course there was nothing in his stomach, so he merely bent double over, his chest crying in agony with every motion, dry heaving.

Coughing, he at last managed to gain control of his body. Why was he being haunted by his past now? He'd never had any dreams of his mother or Alice while in Ryan's employ. Was it the Little sister? Something to do with the Plasmids he'd been taking?

As he brought his breathing under control, he felt a set of eyes boring holes through the back of his head. The Little Sister hadn't moved. She still stood close to him, looking like she both needed protection and wanted to give David some form of aid. Without warning a wave of blinding rage swamped his mind. If it hadn't been for the Little Sister program, if it hadn't been for ADAM, his mother would still be alive. No one would have forced him to join Cassidy's group of assassins, or made him try to kill Fontaine. He wouldn't have died!

David curled his fist so tight he could hear the fabric strain against his knuckles. There was a solution, the same solution the Splicers had initially intended for the young girl. He could harvest the sea slug, kill the little abomination and have access to all the ADAM her body contained.

As she stared at him, trusting, almost caring, he couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't this little girl who'd done those things. In the end she was a victim of those who were responsible. In David's mind that gave them more in common than they had differences. Taking a breath of air, which already had the metallic, poisonous tang to it, he ran his fingers through his short, bristly hair. Once again in control of his emotions he gingerly placed the copper helmet back on his head.

"David?" There was more tension in Tenenbaum's voice than usual. "What happened? I was thinking that you had expired." While she had stayed quiet during the fight, and what must have been his short nap afterwards, Tenenbaum's voice expressed genuine concern.

"Just… resting… my eyes," David wheezed in response. It didn't help his articulation any that he could barely breathe, which only added to his scarred vocal cords. "In bad… shape." Wincing with the effort, the armored teen lifted the Little Sister back onto his shoulders.

"Yes, I know this," Tenenbaum stated matter-of-factly. "I saw the Big Daddy swipe you with his drill. There is solution, but you are needing to trust me. Go to the Big Daddy." He obeyed, moving closer to the fallen creature that had, with his aid, destroyed someone's kitchen. "Use the ADAM needle on your arm to extract a sample of his blood."

For a moment, the wounded teenager hesitated. While any sympathy for the fallen protector had vanished when he had tried to kill him, David didn't want to mutilate the giant's corpse. "Trust me David. This is the only way." With an inward cringe, the former assassin stuck the ADAM needle into the Bouncer's already cold body. Then, he watched as the vial on his arm filled with a bright red liquid.

"Give the suit a moment," Tenenbaum instructed. Gasping as his ribs suddenly snapped back into place, fusing together as though nothing had happened, David jerked away from the Big Daddy. "Better yes?"

Letting out an awed huff of laughter, the armored teen nodded. It was a shock not to feel the agony he had only moments ago. Even the scrapes and bruises he garnered fighting against the Splicers had vanished as though they'd never happened.

"As I thought," Tenenbaum explained, her voice changing from concern to contemplative. "We knew the Big Sisters could extract ADAM directly from their victims. You cannot do this, but your sea slug, working with ADAM infused blood can be made to heal you faster. You understand, yes?" Frankly David didn't understand, nor did he care. At that moment the only thing that mattered to him was that he could move without crippling agony.

Moving past the dead protector, the armored teen stepped through the gaping hole his body had made and into the hallway. As he continued, so did Tenenbaum, "The Big Daddies require a small dose of ADAM to be grafted to their suits. The slug will be working much more efficiently if it can feed on blood that has Plasmids in it. Splicer blood is brimming with ADAM. If you are hurting, they would be the best place to find aid."

David gave a grunt in response, stopping in front of the air vent that had brought him to Volcanus Flats. Here, the Little Sister could hide and stay safe. "Your sea slug knows how to heal her, how to make her human again. This is what I am asking of you. Please, David, help them."