Okay, so I decided to do a crossover of sorts. I know it's a pretty weird combination, but I think it could work.
Holes (I'm assuming you know all about Holes) and BioShock (You don't have to have played it to understand this story, but it's a pretty darn awesome game)
PLEASE don't be put off by the fact it's a crossover, I'll explain everything during the story.
I didn't add in a whole crud load of BioShock characters, or randomly send D-Tent under the ocean. I just sent an OC to camp Green Lake and gave her a BioShock background.
Disclaimer: I do not own Holes or any of the characters affiliated with it, nor do I own BioShock or any of its contents. (This is because I have nowhere to put them)
Have you ever seen a thermogram image? The ones where cold things are shown as different colours to hot things? Well, if you could see like that, the outside air and the inside of the bus would be bright yellow.
In fact, I was having a hard time distinguishing between the two, and I have a lot of experience of seeing in heat vision. Right now, everything just looked yellow.
Sighing, I opened my eyes and squinted slightly as I switched from thermal imagery to optical vision. I bet you wish you could see in heat vision, huh?
Well, I've been through a lot. Heat vision has saved me before. Not that it's going to be any use out here.
I glanced briefly out of the window. 'Out here' was dusty, dry, barren and, bizarrely, full of holes. The inside of the bus contained an armed guard, eyeing me beadily from behind his sunglasses. Which I could see right through.
I shifted in my seat and the handcuffs dug into my wrists a tiny bit. I looked at them, unimpressed. They weren't keeping me here because, lucky me, my muscles have a 350% greater density then yours, meaning I could just rip the handcuffs apart and off of my hands.
The armed guard wouldn't bother me either. I've taken bullets before, from every conceivable shooter. They don't do me any real damage, it just annoys me when I have to pick them out later.
Like I said, I've been through a lot. This is going to require a huge chunk of backstory, so make sure you're sitting comfortably before you read on. Maybe even go and get yourself a drink.
I grew up in a big ol' city called Rapture. I was actually born in England, but I only spent a tiny percentage of my life there. If you asked me where I was from, I would say Rapture.
Rapture was supposed to be a wonderful, modern city where 'the great would not be constrained by the small'. Meaning it was a city without morals, censors or religion.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the 'greats' of Rapture found a way to re-write human D.N.A., making it possible to totally change a person's appearance, or give them super-human abilities.
To do this, a substance called ADAM was required. This substance was found only in one species of deep-sea slug.
It took a fair amount of ADAM to rewrite D.N.A. and the tiny sea slugs could only produce so much. It was then discovered that 30 times the usable amount of ADAM (or more) could be produced when the slug was implanted in a host.
That was the start of the 'little Sister' project. I was in that project.
Then I grew up. For a brief while, I was the prototype 'Big Sister', then they lost me completely.
Okay, backstory done. Back to the present.
Just in time too, as the bus lurched to a halt, throwing up a huge cloud of dust. I heard the guard inhale slightly more air than usual as he prepared to undertake the arduous task of standing up. Yeah, that's right, I heard his intake of breath from all the way down at the end of the bus. Must be my super hearing.
I've got more super-human abilities than Clark Kent.
Well, you're bound to make mistakes with every prototype, right? Every Big Sister after me (which is all of them) was given no genetic 'upgrades' that couldn't be attained by anyone else and put through heavy mental conditioning. They had to upgrade that after I broke mine.
I've covered the supersensitive hearing and the heat vision (although I don't know why I call it 'vision' when I can only use it when my eyes are closed). I can also sense infra red and electrical impulses, which was useful in Rapture for seeing security cameras, bots and turrets before I walked into their line of fire, and for not stepping on bombs or mines.
Whatever. No bombs here. I'm assuming, anyway.
The armed guard levelled his gun at me, standing right at the front of the bus, and jerked his head to the door. I suppose he'd been warned against coming too close. I glared at him for a second.
He waved the gun around a bit. Whatever. Like I said, gunshots don't stop me. Instant cell regeneration, bitch. All down to that sea slug I'm playing host to. It's in my stomach lining, in case you're wondering.
I picked up the only thing I'd brought with me, Walter, and sauntered off the bus. Walter is a monkey wrench. He used to be blue, but after years of abuse and abusing others, he's more of a rusty red.
My heavy black, bronze-tipped steam-punk-esque boots kicked up clouds of dust with each step. I hunched my shoulders and scowled at the sun. It was far too sunny! After living at the bottom of the ocean, the light was uncomfortable. Did I mention Rapture was under the sea?
The guard followed me off the bus, gun still pointed directly at me. He gestured to a small building with his gun.
"HEY! FRESH MEAT!" A guy shouted, about 30 seconds after I'd actually stepped out of the bus. What a remarkable reaction time. I quickly strode over to the small building, attempting to get inside before anyone noticed I was a female.
Inside the small building was a man dressed like a cowboy. His angry, watery eyes were sunken into his face, and a teeny-tiny moustache clung to his lip. He spat the remains of some sunflower seeds into a glass jar before turning to face me.
The guard jabbed me in the back with his gun, giving me the impression he wanted me to sit down. Hey, that was fine by me; it was a lot cooler and darker inside the shack.
"She's still in her handcuffs." The cowboy stared meaningfully at the guard.
"Well, I'm holding the gun. Why don't you unlock her cuffs, man?" The guard retorted. Nobody seemed likely to do anything anytime soon.
Rolling my eyes, I held up my wrists and jerked them apart, breaking the chain between the two metal bracelets. Chain links rained onto the floor, their tinkling interrupting the silence of the room. The cowboy eyed me apprehensively.
"Well, I guess that solves that…" The guard muttered to himself, as the cowboy picked up what I assumed to be my file.
"…Your given name is Voodoo? There was something very wrong with your parents…" I unconsciously clenched my fist that wasn't holding Walter. How dare he say such a thing about my Daddy! That's actually one of the key facts about me; if you insult my Daddy, we're never going to get along. And you'll probably end up dead at some point.
"My name is Mr. Sir; whenever you speak to me you will call me by my name. That clear?" Mr. Sir folded his arms, granting some relief to the straining buttons on his pink shirt. I nodded in response to his question.
"This isn't a Girl Scout camp, you understand?" He got up and waddled over to a small fridge in the corner of the room, opened it, and retrieved what looked like a bottle of cola. "Here." He held the bottle in my general direction.
Now, let me tell you something; when cola is one of the few drinkable substances around you for nine and a half years, (the others being alcohol, the juice from canned fruit, blood and a tiny amount of filtered water) you get sick of it pretty darn quickly. I almost flinched away from the damn bottle.
After a few seconds, it was taken away by the guard, who muttered a quiet 'thanks, man'. Mr. Sir looked somewhat disappointed that I hadn't fallen for his little joke, so he decided to try and elicit a response from me.
"You thirsty, Voodoo?"
"No, Mr. Sir." I purposely yawned widely. That seemed to stump him too. Scowling, he got up and motioned for me to follow him outside.
"Look around you Voodoo, what do you see?" I saw a few guys in orange jumpsuits. Nasty ones, too. A few more wooden buildings. Heat haze. "Any guard towers? How about an electric fence?" I saw nothing of the sort "You wanna run away? Go ahead, start running. I won't stop you. I'M WARNING YOU!" Mr. Sir suddenly shouted at a boy, who rolled his eyes and headed inside.
Well, I didn't know if I was going to like it here or not, so why not stick around for a bit?
"I don't feel like running away right now."
"Good thinking Voodoo, doesn't nobody run away from here, you know why?" Because boys are lazy? "We got the only water for 100 miles, our own little oasis, you wanna run away? Them buzzards'll pick you clean by the end of the third day." Oh. That was what they meant when they said Camp green Lake was un-escapable.
That was the only reason they sent me here. The government hadn't quite figured out what to do about me, and they needed time to think. They didn't want me to just drop off the radar while they were pondering, and they'd witnessed first-hand my escaping skills that would put Houdini to shame.
The flaw in their plan was this; I don't lose water through urination or perspiration, and the sun doesn't cause me to dehydrate at a faster rate than I would just sitting around in an air-conditioned building. Now, this camp must give the inhabitants water, so all I have to do to escape is take a container full of water and walk out.
Although, just walking would be cutting it a bit fine, so I'd probably have to run to cover the 100 miles in a reasonable time. Or keep teleporting. Teleportation rules.
Mr. Sir led me into another wooden building, where he was greeted by a boy with slicked-back hair. Mr. Sir threw me some articles of clothing and a pair of boots.
"Undress. You get two sets of clothes, one for work, one for relaxation. After three days your work clothes will be washed and your second set becomes your work clothes, is that clear?" Nodding, I pulled the heavy metal chest plate off over my head and handed over my huge arm-mounted needle implement. For some odd reason, the police had seemed reluctant to try to take it from me. I unzipped my dirty, worn grey Big Sister jumpsuit, unbuckling the knee and shin guards as I went.
Really, once all the extra things were off, there wasn't a great deal of difference between the Camp green Lake jumpsuit and my Big Sister jumpsuit. Except, mine was more form-fitting. And less of an ugly colour.
Underneath my jumpsuit, I had on what looks like a tiny black scort, ending at the tops of my thighs, and a small top, ending just under my chest. I know that makes me sound like a slag, but I'm not. It's not a tiny scort and top, it's the remains of my Little Sister dress modified into an outfit that would fit me, as a dress that fits a seven year old is obviously not going to fit a 5"11 girl.
I put on the jumpsuit Mr. Sir had so rudely thrown at me, but opted to keep my own boots. I folded up my jumpsuit and stacked up all the extras (I just turned the chest plate upside down and put everything in there). Mr. Sir chose this moment to start posing with a spade
"You are to dig one hole each day, 5 foot deep, 5 foot in diameter." A few snazzy hand gestures here. "Your shovel is your measuring stick." Ah yes, the American word for spade is shovel. "The longer it takes you to dig, the longer you'll be out in the hot sun." He paused here and smirked at me. "And that's not good for anyone, especially someone as pale as you. Never mind, you'll build up a tan eventually." He looked as if he hoped that day wouldn't come for a long time.
I am beyond pale; my skin tone is closer to vampire than ivory, but there is no way I'm getting some nasty tan. I don't want one. You know what a tan is? It's your cells trying to protect themselves from being damaged by ultra-violet rays.
Obviously, as I am Caucasian (and a very pale one at that) I'm going to burn in the sun on the first day, meaning my cells have been damaged by U.V. I, however, have cell regeneration. So, as soon as my cells get damaged, they'll get replaced by new ones. That way, I'll stay pale.
"I'm sure I'll be fine, Mr. Sir" He scowled, getting frustrated at my lack of reactions.
"You need you keep alert for lizards and…rattlesnakes" At this point, I was trying not to giggle as he put on his best ominous voice.
"I love reptiles! They're so cute and scaly! And they have such cute little teeth!" I gave Mr. Sir an opportunity, and he went for it.
"You don't wanna get bit by a yellow spotted lizard. That is the worst thing that can happen to you. You will die a slow and painful death. Always." A fatally poisonous reptile? Even better!
You ever had chicken pox? You know how, if you get it once, you never get it again? Well, I'm like that with drugs and poisons. If I've been exposed to it once, it'll never affect me again. Gotta love that sea slug.
"Really? Wow, I didn't know there were such interesting creatures up here." Mr. Sir's face turned purple. He had failed to achieve his goal of scaring or intimidating me in any way. In fact, he was so angry he didn't notice my slip-up. 'Up here'? That would've been difficult to explain, considering Texas is in the south.
Unfortunately, another man showed up before Mr. Sir exploded. He had a floppy hat, brown loafers, grey knee-length socks and a notebook. His ears were sticking out under his hat. His eyes seemed to be looking in two directions at once. Somehow, he reminded me of a horse and a chimpanzee at the same time.
"Voodoo? I just want you to know that you may have done some bad things, but that does not make you a bad kid. I respect you, Voodoo." He grinned cheesily, brandishing his notebook at me. Well, I would have to disagree there; I'm a very bad person sometimes. This is the most sane and coherent I've been in years. With the right provocation, I'll snap back into my Rapture mind frame. And then there'll be trouble.
Whatever. I was enjoying this. Even before Rapture descended into civil war, there weren't many people like this. To quote my dear friend Augustus Sinclair, "In Rapture, a bleeding heart tends to attract the sharks."
"Welcome to Camp Green lake!" The man shook my hand, wincing as I misjudged the amount of force needed and almost crushed his fingers. "I'm Dr. pendanski, your councillor." He didn't seem like a doctor. All the other doctors I'd encountered had been the mad, genetic-experimenting kind. I decided I liked Dr. Pendanski.
"Start that touchy-feely…" Mr. Sir trailed off as I glared at him, swinging Walter up and back to just behind my right ear. Another key fact about me; I have my favourites. No one messes with them. "Give her some towels, tokens…" Mr. Sir muttered gruffly, waddling off.
Yawning again, I grabbed the grubby excuses for towels and my canteen from the desk.
Dr. Pendanski bobbed purposefully out of the building, signalling to me. I trudged after him, reluctant to leave the shade of the shack.
"You'll be in D-tent; D stands for Diligence. That's the mess hall, there's the rec room, and there's the showers. There's only one knob, because there's only one temperature; cold. Your shower is the special one at the end with head height walls." Dr. Pendanski ran through the list of attractions at lightning speed, flinging his arms about at random. "And that's the warden's cabin over there. That's the number one rule at camp green lake; Do not upset the Warden" Now I had a goal; try to upset the Warden.
"Is Mr. Sir the Warden?" I asked hopefully. If so, my work was already half done.
"No, Mr. Sir isn't the Warden. By the way, Voodoo, would you mind taking off your make-up? Not that it doesn't look nice, but it'll get ruined in all the sand and dust, and if it gets in your eyes… " I assumed he meant the black lining my eyes.
"It's not make-up, Dr. Pendanski, it's skin discolouration." Little Sisters had glowing yellow eyes, surrounded by dark grey shadows, like the ones you get if you stay up too late for a few weeks. When I hit adolescence, the shadows shrunk back, sticking closer to my eye, but darkening as they did so.
"Oh! Uh, well…I'm…uh…" Poor Dr. Pendanski. Luckily I don't get offended easily. "Uh, I'll show you to your tent. You'll be rooming with some boys, but we've roped off a section of the tent for you, and we were told you were more than capable of taking care of yourself. Plus, D-Tent are some of the least violent criminals in the camp!"
Not once I've joined their tent.
"Boys, are you decent?" Dr. pendanski called cheerily into the tent flap.
"Yeah, we won't blind you again dawg, promise!" Came the muffled, sniggered reply.
Dr. Pendanski skipped into the tent, then held the flap open for me. The inside of the tent was quite dim, to my relief. I could tell that the tent would smell to a regular person, but hey; I grew up in a city where dead bodies lay in the streets and ¾ of all the plumbing eventually failed.
A Caucasian boy with brown hair, brown eyes and a toothpick in his mouth was lounging on a cot. Sitting next to him was an overweight black boy with brown eyes. I took a second to check out his thermogram visuals and estimated muscle density. Yup, it was a glandular problem. Estimating muscle density is a cool little thing I can do, to help me size up opponents in a fight. I have a whole range of little tricks like that.
Another black boy with thick, black-rimmed glasses and brown eyes was leaning on a stack of crates next to the cot the other two were sitting on. They all froze when I entered the tent.
"Yo; who's the chick?" Smirked glasses boy, while toothpick boy wolf-whistled.
Oh dear. These boys must have been alone for a long time if they find me attractive. I'm tall and slim, but I don't have a great deal of definition. Which is good in a way, because if I did, then I wouldn't have been able to wear the chest plate, and I wouldn't have been able to fit through such small gaps. I do have rather nice long blonde hair, though, down to about the middle of my back.
Now that I'm sane (sort of) my eyes have stopped being red and gone back to being blue-grey with a dark blue ring around the iris. Even to me, my eyes look hardened. Compare me to any other girl, and you'll see the difference.
I have a very closed face. Emotion doesn't show very well on it. I have a grand range of four expressions; if I'm not smiling (a rare occurrence) or looking curious, then I'm angry. My fourth expression is a combination of boredom and looking emotionless. That's what's on my face if I'm not doing any of my three 'active' expressions. Which is the vast majority of the time. On the plus side, I do have an excellent poker face.
The last thing of note is the zigzag scar under my right eye. Normally, I don't get scars, what with the cell regeneration and all. I got this one from a toxin seeping into a cut. That particular toxin was used in the destruction of contagious bodies. There was this huge outbreak of a highly contagious flu-like illness, and all the bodies had to be burned.
But those bodies contained ADAM that the scientists wanted back first, so the bodies were sent through a sort of extraction machine. The main component of the machine was a metal arm holding hundreds of tiny needles in a zigzag pattern. The needles were coated in this toxin because it killed the virus that caused the illness.
The fluorescent overhead light flickered, lighting the room in fits, just like lightning. The pattering of the little girl's bare feet was amplified as she paddled through the puddles of water spread all over the black and white tiled floor. The only other noise to be heard was the whirring of the extraction machine
Giggling, she spun in a circle, her black, knee-length dress flaring out. She stopped and took a deep breath.
"Rosies and sunshine! Angels is near!"
In the corner of the room lay one of the contagious bodies, wearing a ripped and stained dress, disgustingly mutilated, blood pooled around it. But the little girl didn't see that. She saw an elegantly dressed woman with an outline of a halo and wings, lying in a bed of rose petals.
She saw only what the scientists wanted her to see. Smiling, she patted her stomach and hugged her needle device.
"This one has ADAM!" The little girl dropped to her knees beside the 'angel', "Silly angel, sleeping with the lights on…"
Raising her needle, the little girl stabbed it into the 'angel's' chest. She withdrew the needle and then stabbed again. Repeating this, she began to sing.
"Good girls gather, gather, gather…" The little girl didn't notice the huge, grotesque figure appear in the doorway.
"Well, well, well, what's a Little Sister doing out all by herself?" Growled the 'man'. Twice the size of a human and built like a gorilla, he lumbered into the room.
"Leave me alone!" The Little Sister shouted at the 'man'. She knew what he was. He was one of the ones who spliced up a whole cocktail of physical gene tonics, trying to improve himself. And now, well…
Muscles bulged out of his frame all over him, his face was distorted, all his hair was gone and he was forced to walk on all fours like a gorilla in order to support his weight. He was a brute splicer.
"Aww, don't be like that! I just want some ADAM!" The Little Sister grabbed her needle and backed away into the corner, shaking her head.
"GIVE ME THE ADAM!" Roared the brute splicer, ripping the needle arm off the extraction machine and hurling it at the Little Sister. She was lucky; only the very end of the arm made contact with her face, just below her eye.
"HELP ME, DADDY, PLEASE!" She screamed.
From that moment on, the staff at the orphanage called me the Zigzag Kid. I didn't earn the name Voodoo until later.
"Boys, this is Voodoo. She isn't taking Lewis' place; she's just here for safekeeping. Voodoo, this is Alan, Theodore and Rex." Immediately, the boys began complaining. It seemed they'd had this argument before.
"Yo, my name is X-Ray," Glasses boy informed me, "That's Armpit and that's Squid." All right, the overweight guy being called Armpit I could understand (He seemed to be the source of most of the smell), but Squid?
"Him?" Squid gestured with his head to Dr. Pendanski, "He's Mom." Mum. Dr. Pendanski instantly became unfavourited. Who needs a mum? Not me.
"They all have their little nick-names, but I prefer to use the names their parents gave them; the names that society will recognise them by." Dr. pendanski shot me a proud motherly smile.
"Really? For me, society only ever recognized me by my nick-names." I decided to contradict Pendanski for the sake of it.
Pendanski was prevented from replying by the arrival of two more boys. Both were covered in the red dust from outside. One had brown eyes, a bandana tied around his head and the same skin tone as Ms. Martinez from the orphanage. The other was Caucasian with blue eyes and a mop of blonde hair.
"Hey. I'm Magnet. That's Zigzag. What are you doing here, chica?" The bandana one asked me confusedly. He had the same accent as Ms. Martinez, too.
Zigzag? What a weird coincidence. I inclined my head towards him. He just stared at me before walking over to the other side of the tent. Whatever. I was smiling on the inside.
"Apparently this place is un-escapable." I replied to Magnet's question. Everyone's faces seemed to light up. "What?"
"You have an English accent!" Grinned Squid.
"Yours is deep south, right? You sound like Sinclair, he used to live in…Georgia?" I think that's what he said, anyway. My surface geography is next to non-existent.
At this moment, another boy walked into the tent. He was black, had brown eyes and was dripping wet. I assumed he'd come from the showers. He was a good foot shorter than all the other boys. I could feel what remained of my mental conditioning trying to take control of me. 'Protect the little ones, protect the little ones…'
"Ahh, now this is Zero. Say hello to Voodoo, Zero." Dr. Pendanski sneered at 'Zero'. Unsurprisingly, Zero ignored him. "You wanna know why they call him Zero?" If it'll make you go away quicker. Mum. Pshh. "There's nothing going on in his stupid little head!" I doubted that. In my experience, the stupid ones are hardly ever quiet.
"Did you tell her about the lizards?" Another deep south accent, but a deeper voice. Zigzag smirked in anticipation. Why does everybody here seem to want to scare me?
"Now Ricky, let's not scare Voodoo" Dr. pendanski chided.
"His name's not Ricky; it's Zigzag, aight?" X-Ray corrected.
"There's only one thing on this earth that scares me, and it isn't a few cute little lizards." I stared Dr. Pendanski down. This seemed to phase him, if only a little.
"Voodoo, if you have any questions just ask José. José will be your mentor. You got that, José?" Magnet beamed.
"Hell yeah, I got that Mom!" I wrinkled my nose at the mention of mum.
"I'm depending on you. It should be no labour to be nice to your neighbour!" Dr. Pendanski led me behind a screen set up in the corner of the tent. "Here is your cot and your crate." I stowed my 'towels' and my jumpsuits (Camp Green Lake and Big Sister), dumped my extras and my canteen on the floor, and headed back into the main area of the tent. "Uhh, Voodoo? You're going to have to hand over that wrench…"
I stopped walking and turned around to face him. I could practically feel my face setting and my eyes hardening. The moronic smile slowly slid from his face.
"You've been unfavourited." I turned my back on him. "Magnet, is there a place where I can fill my canteen?"
"Sure, chica, there's a water spigot over here. Follow me." (End chapter)
Okay, tell me what you think, I honestly don't care if you tell me you hate it, I just want to know.
Also, I have a horrible feeling I weaved in and out of different cases and tenses while I was writing, so if you spot a major error, please point it out. :) Thank you.