Work Text:
Subject Delta used to have a different name once. He can no longer remember what it is now, but he knows he used to have a different one. Oh, sure, he answers to this new name when they fetch him, consciously and willfully identifies with it; but that does not erase what he can vaguely remember—even though remembering is such exhausting work these days. It literally hurts him all over to try.
It didn’t always, though. Subject Delta knows that, too. There was a time—however long ago it was; that part always escapes him—when he fought hard to retain everything he knew to be true about himself. First on pen and paper, which they took from him; then on the walls where they kept him, which they beat him for doing. When he finally turned, in desperation, to keeping track on his own skin, they did nothing about it. Maybe they figured he was almost gone by that point. Maybe they were even right, sort of, but at least they didn’t take the information from him. They couldn’t. Not without risk of losing him entirely.
The letters carved into his skin are gnarled and distorted now, ruined by all of their so-called treatments designed to make him better, but they are still there. They are useless to anyone who might wish to recover his past, but they are proof that he had one; that he existed as something—as someone—other than who or what he is now.
He won, in the end.
Sort of.
“This the newest one?”
The man standing in front of Subject Delta is dressed in clothes that brings the word technician to mind. (He isn’t sure why. Maybe the answer lies in one of the words carved into his skin, meaning he will never be sure.) He tries to shape the word in his mouth. For a fleeting moment, he almost has it—then his tongue carelessly brushes against one of its sides and the word shatters. The shards fall into Subject Delta’s ruined throat, making what remains of his vocal chords vibrate with a small guttural sound. The technician moves back from him, though he cannot imagine why. Other hands, other men in different clothes, put restraints on his arms and legs; made sure they were tight enough to prevent…what was the word they used…?
Accidents.
Yes but no. Not this time. It was a different word. One that somehow fit better in his mouth but left his chest feeling the way a dose of Winter Blast does—used to, back in the Theater, back when he used to have a different name. What was the word?
Mishaps.
No! That’s the word they used in front of the audience to keep them seated! What was the actual word? Has he forgotten it already?
Escape.
There it is. The familiar chill spreads from his chest to his limbs as the word sinks back into the foggy wasteland of his mind.
“Y’just gonna sit there and stare at him or are y’actually gonna do your job and get him fitted?” The voice is different. The owner is in the same kind of clothing as the Thin Technician, but he is stockier and has a strip of short hair under his nose. (The word mustache breaks through the fog of Subject Delta’s mind two seconds later.) “We’re kinda on a schedule, here.”
“Yeah, sure, just gimme a damn second. They fucker just about made me shit my pants just now. They didn’t say nothing about them making noises.”
“Well, now you know that they make noises,” says the Mustache Technician. “Hurry up and get his gear. Sooner we get him prepped, the more likely I am to keep his face out of my nightmares tonight.”
The words inspire no reaction. They might have at one time, when he was still handsome—and he was handsome once, wasn’t he? That feels certain. Just as he knows he used to have a different name, Subject Delta knows that he did not always look as he does now. He was handsome. Other people certainly thought so. Women, men; young, old; they were drawn to the young man with the fine features and the well-coiffed brown hair, the natural tan, the swimmer’s physique. It was his eyes that pulled most of them in, though, wasn’t it? Green as the palm fronds during the height of summer, capable of conveying a wealth of words with the subtlest of shifts…
Oh, yes. Subject Delta was handsome once. A long time ago, seems like.
Now look at him.
Or better yet, don’t.
“Christ on a fuck-stick, what an ugly bastard.” The Thin Technician lets out a low whistle. “How long they have this one doing time in R & D?”
“Dunno. Guy was a crowd favorite in the ol’ Plasmid Theater, I know that much.” The Mustache Technician briefly raises and lowers his shoulders. “Word is, though, Sinclair was real reluctant to let this one go out with the rest of his usual shipment to Fontaine.”
The Thin Technician raises an eyebrow. “Was he?”
“Oh yeah. Apparently, Fontaine had to really push him on it.”
“Well, Fontaine’s got a quota to meet. It’s the simple law of supply and demand. A man like Sinclair knows that better’n anybody else.”
The Mustache Technician chuckles. “Oh, but it gets better. There’s talk this one might’ve wound up signing on voluntarily.”
The Thin Technician pauses in the midst of preparing the requested gear to laugh. “You’re bullshitting me now.”
“Hand on Ryan’s balls, I swear it’s true. Guess he figured whatever was gonna happen to him in R & D was miles better than whatever living conditions Sinclair had for him in Persephone. Can’t say I blame the bastard, can I?”
“Guess not, no.”
Sinclair. Sinclair. Sinclair.
The name rings a very distant bell in Subject Delta’s mind. Images solidify in the murk—a box of cigars, suspenders, a can of hair pomade—but they make no sense. They dissolve back into the mist and are forgotten. Still, the name persists as a strange whisper, keeping time with his pulse.
Sinclair. Sinclair. Sinclair.
A tall, dark-haired man emerges from the fog next, hazel eyes gleaming with a smile and a plan. It triggers a glimmer of warmth that feels simultaneously new and familiar all at once. Is it fever? An accidental activation of Incinerate? No. It isn’t real heat—not real as in physical, anyway. Less like the smothering warmth of fever or the shifting burn of Incinerate, more like…like…
Subject Delta knows this man, doesn’t he? Or he did, once, back when he used to be handsome and have a different name. They knew each other.
They…warmed each other.
No. That’s not it.
It is, but not quite. That isn’t the specific word. They…
What did they do together?
The word exists too far out of reach. Gone. Lost. The man with the hazel eyes, the man who is so familiar but still a stranger, begins to fade back into the mental mist; so, too, does the glimmer of strange warmth.
A sound of frustration rises out of Subject Delta’s faulty throat. This time, the Thin Technician does not move back. The Mustache Man draws near.
“You got everything?”
“Yeah. Where do we start?”
The hooks they slide under his arms are cold in a different way from Winter Blast, more like medical equipment—like scalpels gleaming under surgery lights The Thin Technician undoes the straps around his wrists. Both men shake their fists and make shapes with their fingers before the Thin Technician bends to remove the straps from around Subject Delta’s ankles. The Mustache Technician walks away, behind a wall. The growl and whine of machinery fills the room. The sudden weightlessness offered by the hooks is troubling, but the men do nothing when he sounds out his distress. Instead, the Thin Technician holds his legs. The Mustache Technician wheels over a hulking hollow shape—a suit of reinforced leather and rivets, rope and metal.
A new word drifts out of the haze, solid and heavier than the others that have drifted through.
Protector.
Warmth floods his body, stronger than before—reassuring, even. Yes. Protector. That’s what they want him to be, isn’t it? That’s what he is now. Not the man he can no longer remember but something more. Stronger. Better. A guard for Rapture’s most precious treasures.
The heavy leather fits like an embrace around his arms and legs. He breathes in and there is enough give in the material to do so. The men strap on the boots before returning him to solid ground and he feels sturdier than he has in…however long it has been. Time is so terribly difficult to track. He really should stop bothering with trying.
The Thin Technician whistles again. “Jesus, he already looks like a terror. They’re really going to trust these things with little kids?”
“Not kids,” says the Mustache Technician. “Anyway, it’s not our business. We just get ‘em prepped and send ‘em out—which we should’ve done by now.”
“Jeez, gimme a fucking break. We’re almost done.”
The men slip needles into his wrists, but the pain barely registers. Gloves next, and one of them bears an odd little symbol on the back. (Subject Delta knows it by sight, though the word for it is lost to him; the scientists put it on everything connected to him.) The weight of a large and powerful drill settles over his right arm. Seeing it there, feeling its heft…
Subject Delta no longer remembers the word pride, but he feels the reassuring warmth again.
“Good thing they’re giving these bastards something to cover their faces,” says the Thin Technician. “Can you imagine having to look at these guys every day?”
The Mustache Technician makes a little sound. “Well, I suspect that’s why they gave them the helmets, so we wouldn’t have to imagine.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a regular—”
The voice is muffled as the helmet slides into place. Subject Delta can hear the pulse of his heart in his ears. An overwhelming sense of ease fills him. This is right. Proper. This is what all of his suffering has led to. They wanted to make him stronger. Better. A value to society. They have succeeded, haven’t they? Of course, they have.
Subject Delta breathes out and the window through which he now views the world fogs over. As it recedes, something in the glass catches his attention. The ghostly reflection of eyes, green as palm fronds in the height of summer. A single word comes out of the fog, then, all at once clear and sharp and scalding.
Rage.