Part 11: Induction
The air ripped past David's head as he tried vainly to right himself. A sudden, blinding ripped into his body as his hip caught on a piece of broken piping. The wayward piece of steel sent the teenager spinning, tumbling end over end. He clipped his should and arm on more debris before he came to a sudden and jarring halt.
For a moment, David was content to lie there, face up, struggling to breathe. Finally he worked up the energy to look at his surroundings. When he turned his head he found that he hadn't hit the bottom of the pit, but had struck an outcropping, a narrow ledge that had survived whatever catastrophe that had made the hole in the first place.
When he tried to roll, and relieve his aching back, the narrow slab of tile and concrete folded beneath him. David's stomach leapt into his throat as, once again, he fell into darkness. Now in free fall, he could see the floor as it seemed to fly up to meet him. The last few yards jumped to crash into his face, sending his mind into darkness.
David's unconscious mind returned to the day he'd been kidnapped. It had happened so fast. One moment he'd been alone, hunting through someone's garbage for something to eat, the next someone had pinned both of his arms behind his back. Someone slipped a black bag over his head before a painful splash of agony had put him under. When next he'd come to, the bag was removed and he found himself in a dark room with a single glaring light. There were another thirty or so boys, David's age, in a line to either side of him, all of them blinking in the light. Ringing the room were another ten guards, all dressed in black.
"What's going on?" One of the other boys asked. "Where are we?" With the arrogance of a small mind that clung to authority, one of the men dressed in black strode behind the boy. There was an audible crack as the man hit the back of the boy's knees with a short baton. The speaker dropped to the floor, with a cry of pain and alarm.
"You will speak when spoken to," the man in black shouted grabbing a fistful of the boy's hair. The malice and hatred in the man's voice, combined with the startling violence against an unarmed youth, made David's eyes go wide.
"But I don't-," before the talkative boy could finish, the guard smashed his baton against his cheek. The sound of bones snapping under the force of the man's blow echoed like a gunshot in the quiet of the room. The aggression and pitilessness of the man in black instantly bred compliance and obedience.
They were ordered to strip down to their underwear as a man in a white lab coat moved from one boy to the next, examining them. The boy next to David had, at some point, broken his leg and the break hadn't been set properly. This left him favoring his other leg.
When the man in the white coat examined the malformed limb, he turned to one of the guards and said, "Unfit." Without pause the guard strode to the boy in question, put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. As the boy fell to the floor, David forced his legs to stay where they were. As his mind fought between running and staying put, one of the other boys made a break for the door. He made it three steps before one of the men in black, the same one who'd executed the "unfit" boy, fired again. The boy's body crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut.
His body shaking, David followed the physician's orders, any thought of trying to escape completely smothered. Not only was escape evidently impossible, he had nothing to go back to. His mother was dead, his friends had abandoned him when he'd become a homeless orphan. As terrifying as it was, this was his new future, and whether he liked it or not, he would survive it.
In the end, while David escaped execution, another four were deemed unfit and shot. The next three days became more of the same, physical examinations that tested their strength, stamina, speed and agility, mental aptitude tests that explored their ability to adept and think under pressure. At the end of every test, more boys were executed. Those three days David pushed himself harder than he thought he was capable of. He wasn't the fastest, or the strongest, never at the front of the pack, but he survived, he stayed alive.
When the last test was complete, just when David was sure he would die of exhaustion, he and the others were ordered to a laboratory. One by one, the other boys would go through a closed door. On the other side, David could hear screaming, shouting, pleas for mercy. None of the boys came back through the door. Either there was another exit to the lab, or none of them were surviving.
When it was David's turn, he found himself lain on a table, his arms, legs and head held in place by metal bindings and surrounded by men in white lab coats. Without warning a funnel was jammed into his mouth so hard it triggered his gag reflex. The next thing he knew something slimy was crawling its way down his esophagus.
The next few hours were a blur of color and light, his body trying to acclimate to whatever had been done to him. When he began to surface toward consciousness, the bindings still holding him in place, he found a physician standing over him, holding a long hypodermic needle. Without a word of warning the lab rat stuck the needle into David's abdomen. As his stomach flared in agony his eyesight went dark.
Suddenly, the teenager was no longer in a laboratory in Rapture. He was in a cold trench, a bolt action rifle in his hands. "Les voila," a man shouted. Though David had never spoken a word of French in his life, he understood the man as clear as day. Here they come! After three long, cold months in the trench, David was ready for the Austrians. As the artillery boomed around him, he climbed to his feet and propped his rifle over the edge of the trench. A staggered line of men were running forward, charging across the ravaged no-man's land. His rifle thumped against his shoulder as he fired. In response, one of the charging Austrians fell back, a spray of red mist gushing from his throat.
Without warning, David came screaming back to the lab, the trenches of World War One, The Great War, The War to End all Wars, was stuck in his brain. Four years of mind numbing horror and violence, bloody trench fights and nighttime raids were etched into his memory as though he'd been there himself. Just as his brain was beginning to cope with the sudden wealth of information, another flare of agony erupted from his stomach as another needle was pushed into his torso.
Cold ocean spray splashed against his face. "Remember your training, and you will make it through this!" David turned to the speaker, his sergeant, as German bullets began to hammer the tiny landing craft. The front of the boat disappeared, splashing into the water. A string of bullets ripped into the sergeant, as the landing craft suddenly became alive with hot lead. David gripped his Thompson to his chest and dove over the side, hoping the water wasn't too deep.
A pleading cry escaped the teen's lips as he came, once again back to the lab. Two years in France, Holland and finally, Germany had become lodged within his mind. He'd fought the Nazi's from one end of Europe to the other, ruthlessly turning men into corpses along the road to Berlin. This is impossible, David thought uselessly. I've never even held a gun, let alone killed someone! No matter how hard he tried to deny it, he could still remember executing controlled bursts with a Thompson, using his bolt action as a club to cave in men's heads, and what amounted to more than half a decade fighting against the Nazis and Austrians.
With a start, David awoke in a puddle of ocean water. He wasn't in Ryan's labs. He wasn't being experimented on, being turned into a weapon. Back in the present, he found his body was a wreck of injuries and pain. His left shoulder and hip were a testament to his continued existence, as breaking them on the way down had slowed him enough to keep his body in one piece when it slammed into the hard marble at the bottom. Meanwhile, his back head, and ribs were a testament to how hard he'd still managed to hit the ground. Pressing his gloved hands against the floor, David brought himself to a kneeling position.
He turned to an ominous thump that filled the quiet room. Standing before the all but broken teenager, a Splicer in a masquerade mask gave him a lopsided grin. In each hand the man held a short, farming scythe.
"I'm going to gut your ass, Fishbowl!" With a hate filled growl, David brought himself to his feet. The memories that didn't belong to him, the ones that did, his past and this piece of filth mocking him in the present had pushed him beyond reason. With a roar, the Splicer charged forward, swinging both scythes to cut the armored teen's head from his shoulders.
Calmly, David swept the blades aside with practiced ease, pulling the Splicer forward and off balance. Even injured, he outmatched the untrained Plasmid user in strength, speed and cunning. With the Splicer's arms pinned together under the former assassin's armpit, David rammed his ADAM hypodermic needle into the man's heart. As near as they were, the armored teen could feel the life fly away from the Splicer.
As he felt the sea slug in his stomach go to work, feeding off the ADAM rich blood, David could hear more Splicers making their way down to him. There was a painful crack as his shoulder popped back into the socket, an indescribable itching as his tibia fused back together. He watched, as the last of his more impressive injuries faded, as more Splicers tumbled gracefully down, through the massive hole in the ceiling.
As they landed around him, waiting for their numbers to grow, he took the opportunity to take in his surroundings. He was surprised to find how close he had come to impaling himself on the cause of the structural failure that had destroyed so much of Zeus's Crown. It was a massive chandelier, easily as big, if not bigger than, Ryan's personal train car, a monolithic golden creation that had a series of arms holding chains. Something must have caused it to fall, sending it crashing into the banquet hall where it rested.
The room was large, mostly empty, save for the pile of rubble where the chandelier lay in ruin. Around the edges, a balcony stood, overlooking the massive, open, room providing several small alcoves where David could either take temporary shelter, or become cornered. Lighting the room was a massive, glass window that showed a spectacular view of Rapture and the ocean floor.
Throwing the long dead Splicer aside, and feeling better than he had since Tenenbaum had revived him, David clenched his fists. At last the Splicer who had so cleverly mimicked a statue landed gracefully at the forefront of the pack of killers. For a brief moment, the two sides stared at each other, appraising their opponent's strengths and weaknesses. It was the last calm moment in that room for a very long time.