Little One (Bioshock)

chapter five

FEBRUARY, 1959

They had come in like death. Demanding, scary and nothing like birth. Nothing was said properly and all Claire could hear was screaming and crying. It took her minute to fully open her seas of eyes and to focus on who's hands were grabbing onto her. It wasn't the soft hand of her mother's, it wasn't the familiar tone of even her father's. No - this voice was harsh and sounded like something heavy being pulled across the ground. It grabbed hold of Claire and squeezed her so hard she thought she'd be dead. Only it didn't work out that way.

She saw her mother, reaching out for her in a wild lunge of panic and hysteria. She never reached her and she never would. The further Claire was pulled away from her, the more she cried out. Hot tears raced down her cheeks and a single hand flew through the air. "Momma!" was all that left her lips before a different, evil hand clamped down and hissed into her ear to be quiet.

Claire would never forget those wails of pure sadness and pain.

She fought as hard as she could for a four year old. Flailing her arms around in a hope she'd hit her kidnapper, swinging her little legs and hoping her tiny toes would jam into their back. Her lungs in took gallons of air for her to shriek back out but it was to no avail - she was being taken. Like all those other little girls and how their mommas cried for weeks. Claire could hear them crying from her apartment sometimes. And when her mother wasn't around, she would go down to their rooms and try to cheer them up. She didn't know that allowing them to see her only gave them more pain.

Her kidnappers took her to a place she had never seen before. After shoving her into a insides of a man's coat, she struggled to breathe and didn't risk screaming, fearing she'd run out of air. When the coat was removed, she had no idea where she was. Claire didn't have time to piece it together either. The men shoved her forward into a single room, with a door that had bars on the window too high for the four year old to see through. The force of the push knocked her down. Her knees scraped across the wooden floor but she didn't let herself scream out loud. She slammed her own hand onto her mouth and squeezed the years back. Doing this, she distracted herself from seeing the door close behind her, a lock following after, sealing her inside.

The blood was less than what she thought and after a while Claire stood up and sat on the small pink bed in the corner of the room, reserved for her. The sheets were cold so she didn't touch them. Her blood was already strained on them anyway.

She didn't expect to stay long. Hours later the door to her cell reopened, and a tall man wearing a long white coat stood there. Claire couldn't see the goons on either side. Her eyes were locked on him as he entered. The man stopped at the ending of the bed; Claire responded by molding herself into the wall.

"I am not here to hurt you," he said at her reaction. She didn't believe him, and she had every right to. The man was lying. "I want you to come with me. Is that okay Claire?"

Her fear grew ten times at the fact that he knew her name. No one ever knew her name. Not the men who tried to steal their food and ADAM, not the women who yanked on Claire's little arms, thinking she was one of the ghoulish girls. Yet if someone did happen to know, even a sliver of her, her mother was always there to protect her. She never had to worry, but now? The little girl was terrified. Her breathing struggled and trudged along, trying to regulate itself but as long as she was here, it would never normalize. Claire knew, somewhere deep down in her small little body, that horrible things were going to happen to her. No matter how much she would fight or scream or yell, she wasn't going to win. She didn't know whether to accept that or not. She didn't want to.

Claire didn't move. She stayed frozen in her bed corner. When the man finally realized that she didn't have a desire to come with him, he became angry. She had never experienced anything like it before. He harshly grabbed onto her wrist and jerked her off of the bed. Her already wounded knees hit the hard floor and a whine came out of her. "Shut up," the man growled as he pulled her up onto her bare feet. "If you behaved properly, maybe you wouldn't hurt." With that the man began to walk out of the room, dragging Claire behind him, and down a hallway with many other doors. She noticed they all looked like her door - with high windows and bars. Were there other girls here too? Behind those doors?