Little One (Bioshock)

chapter ten.

SEPTEMBER, 1968

"Smell the ADAM? Over there!"

The Little Sister hopped down from the cage on her back, bouncing a bit as her feet were settled on the cold floor. With her harvester in hand, she skipped over to the dead body stuck to the chipping tile floor. It was female, with a huge chunk of her hair missing on the left side of her head. She was dressed in tattered green rags, assuming it was once an elegant dress worthy of any woman of Rapture. Her feet were deformed to fit the angles of her heels. She had Spliced up until the very last hours of her days, and the hole in her chest indicating on what was the ending blow for her. The Little Sister had gotten down on her knees, looking down onto the angel with a glimmer in her warm yellow eyes, and she then shoved the metal needle deep inside of the woman's stomach.

Claire was already set into action. Setting up traps for the Splicer bastards who dared to even try and hurt her Sister. A puddle of oil had leaked from a barrel, and Claire set it aflame at once. The roars of the fire almost scared the girl near the dead body, but once she had who had ignited the beast, she only rolled her eyes. Her Little Sister thought Claire was overprotective, too paranoid in the dark and damp city. She would be fine, she said to her, no one would ever hurt her. Oh how much Claire wanted to tell her of her own days as a Little Sister, and how close she came to the end. Her Daddy was a tough fighter, and she would be forever grateful for that. Yet now it was her turn to protect her Little Sister with her life, and much like her Daddy, she would die for this sweet little girl.

Landing onto the ground behind her Sister, Claire lowered into an almost crouching stance. Her eyes flickered from side to side, waiting for the things to come out from hiding and into the light, where she would be waiting to slice them away. From behind her, the small frame of her Sister sat happily, humming as sweetly as ever as she watched the ADAM fill the baby bottle. She acted like she was in no danger, that she was as safe as could be. In fact, with a Big Sister protecting her, she was.

"Who watches over sleeping angels?" she asked the corpse. "I do, I do..."

Claire smirked inside of her mask as the scream of an incoming Splicer ripped through her veil. Her Little Sister yanked the harvester out and picked another spot to jam it back into. This time she chose the woman's shoulder. Not much ADAM from these places typically, but today it was a gold mine. ADAM poured into the baby bottle eagerly, almost as if it were happy to be there.

The first Splicer appeared - a Spider Splicer - and threw pathetic, hot rings of iron at Claire. She just flicked them away. They were nothing to her, and it was honestly a little disappointing that this is all that came this time. Nevertheless, Claire still had a job to do. She shrieked at the laughing freak on the ceiling and threw balls of burning hot gas at him. In an instant his entire body was set on fire. He panicked, screaming as his flesh burned and fell to the ground. The impact of his back on the ground knocked the wind right out of him, and Claire had enough time to run over to him. She grabbed onto his legs and pulled him toward her, shoving her own needle into his body and draining the ADAM right out of him. This was usually done when the person was dead, as that was the only way the girls could get the ADAM out, but now that they were older and much, much stronger, getting ADAM from a live being wasn't the hardest thing in the world.

The Splicer squirmed and yelled, "She got me! She got me! I can't feel the spiders in my veins!" Claire pulled the needle out from his body and pushed him away, the ADAM not coming to her through the needle. She was getting bored of her little game too quickly, and now she had already decided on killing him.

She turned back to the Spider Splicer, the red light burning into his mind forever. In a frenzy, the Splicer jumped up as high as he could and caught onto the ceiling, catching the Sister's eye and getting a giggle from her. "Look out, Big Sister!"