Little One (Bioshock)

bonus chapter: lil' brother

FROM THE OFFICE OF DR. BRIGID TENENBAUM.

Audio Diary entitled "Why Just Girls?"

PLAY.

"I know why it has to be children, but why just girls? This I cannot determine why, but I know it is so. Fontaine says, 'Ah, one less bathroom to build in the orphanage'. It is amazing to watch the effect of ADAM on their small bodies. Their own cells, replaced by the new stems the instant they are damaged. These children are practically invulnerable. It is a shame you could not do the same thing to an adult. There would be quite a market for a man you could not kill."

Children. The key to hosting the ADAM slug would be children. At first, the idea didn't bother me in any sort of fashion. I thought it would be ultimately harder to retrieve children to be tested on willingly. What child in their right mind would want to be prodded and poked at, injected with mysterious liquids and go through pain and possibly die? And then the thought struck me: these children could never consent to the testing we would be doing on them. They were, after all, just children. Asking a child to come with us would be extremely difficult. We then thought of the idea of taking these children for ourselves. The only thing that stood in our way down in the dark city of Rapture would be their parents.

We started on orphans first. They were the easiest to obtain and test on. After only a few years of Rapture being the glorious city it claimed to be, the single orphanage that had been built, courtesy of Frank Fontaine, had over twenty orphans for us to take away. We took five girls and five boys. We lied to the children and told them they would come and live with us, Suchong and I - which was not entirely a lie. It was obvious with Suchong that he didn't like the children. He showed his distaste of them right away, but I tried my best to appear motherly toward them. I held some of their hands, I fed them and bathed them. They had donned the name "Mama Tenenbaum" in regards of myself, and I never denied it. After a while of staying with the children I indeed felt like their mama. They called Suchong, "Papa Suchong," only they knew he was far from it.

The tests were conducted in the following weeks after we had received them. We took one girl and one boy and did the simple operation on the pair. It was long and tiring on Suchong, who followed my directions at the best that he could. He did nothing wrong, and despite my dislike of him, he did everything beyond my expectations. The girl was under the knife for five hours, the boy for four. After the slugs were secured into the lining of both of their stomachs, we stitched them back up. They were sent to an observing room, where myself, Suchong and a few others gathered to test and document the effects of the slug on the children. I did not know how to feel about what we had done to these children, seeing their tiny, little bodies laying in the hospital beds after the operations were over with. They were both still sleeping and we were all waiting for the anesthesia to wear off of their bodies. Suchong stood besides me, waiting as well, but he seemed so impatient just watching and waiting. He didn't have any papers to document the events that were to be played out, and at first I thought he wasn't going to do anything of the sort, but then it dawned on me that he would simply use mine and the other doctors' notes when it was all over with. Perhaps he thought that since he was the only doctor to perform the operation that he was entitled to my notes. I made sure he never did get his greedy hands on my work.

When the two finally did stir from their dreams, everything seemed to be okay. Their little eyelids fluttered open normally and we had them sit up to test if any dizziness had occurred. However they both seemed fine. I did note that their skin tone had darkened to a soft gray, which was an affect we later on could not remove. Their eyes had also changed hue. The girl, her name was Louise, had soft brown eyes that now reminded me of the color of a sunset. The boy, named Micheal, had enlightening blue eyes that were now the softest shade of honey. It was quite a change. Yet despite all of the physical differences, the children were fine. It was the first victory for us.

It did not stay for too long. Whereas the girl was stable mentally, it appeared that the boy was not so. He had gotten snippy with the medical staff. He yanked his arms away from their alien touch, he snapped his teeth at the nurses who came to help him. The only person he didn't act in such a way was me. When I walked over to see what was the matter with him, his entire persona changed in an instant. A smile I had grown attached to appeared and before my eyes I witnessed the change of two different boys. This was the Micheal I knew. The Micheal who liked warm milk when he could not sleep at night. The Micheal who was the shyest around Elise and drew her pictures from time to time. This boy leapt from his bed to hug me around the waist and hum, "Mama Tenenbaum."

Louise was tested to be fine, although she was still to be kept under observations just in case. I made sure to stay with Micheal myself and record how his mental state had changed. Around people he was not familiar with, he grew hostile. He did not trust the nice smile he was given. He only appeared to trust myself and no one else. He was especially angry towards Suchong. Whenever he saw him, even when I was with him, Micheal went into a fit of rage. He screamed and kicked. He did not listen to anything. All he saw was Suchong and his hatred for him. Putting the needle into his strained neck was hard for me to do.

Suchong suggested that we were to just kill him. "Put him out of misery," he told me one day. "He is obvious little beast."

"He is just a child," I told Suchong. I could not understand how he could say these things to easily, with no regard for his words.

We kept him isolated from the other children. We did not know what he could do to others, if he would even be friendly towards them or not. And possibly the second biggest mistake I made besides putting that disease into those hopeless children was to put Louise and Micheal in the same room.

We wanted to test how the ADAM slugs would react with one another. It would be the first of many tests, yes, but in scientific field it had to be done. The aftermath was... The rage and pure madness I saw in that boy's eyes was unlike anything I had seen in this earth. I was the one to plunge the needle of anesthesia into him again. Sleeping, Micheal looked like just a boy. A small baby to put into bed. An innocent life I had ruined.

I think that was the beginning of my breaking mind. That was the start of my hatred of this vile crime I had committed, and my hatred of myself. Who but a monster could do this to children? Small lives that had barely just begun, and I took them for myself and shifted them into whatever I wanted. However, again it was just the seeds of the thoughts. The roots would take hold and grow later on, well after my cruel hands tainted every single child in Rapture and nothing could be done about it. Or so I thought.

I kept him asleep for as long as I could before Suchong demanded that the boy be killed. I kept him alive for a week. The next operation on the next set of children was approaching, and I could not help with that and watch over and take care of Micheal.

He went painlessly into his sleep. I made a prayer for his soul, in case he believed in a God. I surely did not.

 The next boy injected with the slug, Philip, reacted the same way. Rage was all that he could focus on, and he took it out on everyone but me. It was like a small hell for me. To see the fire burn in his eyes, the fury of the world put on his shoulders, only for it to melt away the second he saw me and muse, "Mama Tenenbaum, Mama Tenenbaum!"

I did not want 'Mama' attached to me anymore. I felt as though I had ruined the word forever. It would never glue onto me so flawlessly. I hated it. I grew to hate every inch of it until I spat out at the children to never call me that again. I did not want to hear it. I did not want any part in it. But the hatred subsided when I saw their lost eyes stare back at me with fear, and I did not wish for them to fear me. So, as weak as I am, I buried my own emotions. I never confronted them until the city was turned against me.

In the end, we never did find out why the boys turned out the way they did. Their anger was maximized when mixed with the ADAM slug. We could not explain it. The girls were mentally healthy. They danced and sang and played like little girls, and that was all we could ask for. We stopped testing on the little boys and turned solely to the girls as a host. The boys were a lost cause no one wanted to help. We killed every one we tested. We covered it up like the monsters we were and continued to ruin the lives of the girls every day. The operations turned to be conducted daily, with Suchong no longer needing me as I guide. As he cut open the bellies, I made sure they were successfully mutated. There is nothing to say for what we did.