Disclaimer: I do not own "Bioshock" or am I making any money off this...blah yah...and all that jazz. You get this by now.

A/N: This is all unbeta-ed so I apologize for any mistakes.

He lives on.

He learns to listen.

Not to the screams of torment and desperation from the cells around him, but to the eerie world he is slowly being forced into. Life has become a rhythm, full of melody and a beauty only he can understand. The gurgle of plasmids as they are filtered through pipes, the slice of needles through flesh, the forever present hum of machinery and his own low, inhuman, groans. He learns to listen to it all and his mind somehow begins to understand the flashes upon the screens he is forced to watch daily.

His existence is painful and full of hate and anger an-

-but there is the music. The sick perverted beauty seen through fevered, drugged, eyes.

There is the heavy lumbering steps of the metal men passing in the corridors throughout the night, being dragged through the hallways, metal hammering metal, and the almost silent sounds of the sea surrounding them. The whisper of parents, telling children to hush; the air rushing with excitement and awe as, once again, another tin-man falls, groaning, under his hand.

As he learns to listen, he learns to calm down, to breath deep and relax.

He learns the Rules.

He plays his part, does what he is told and makes the white-coats happy, the spectators clap harder.

His good behavior is observed and noticed; the white-coats come for him at night.

"Subject Delta?"

A man's irritated sigh, the rustle of clothing as one sits and the itch of pen on paper.

"Yeah, you know 'm, the tall bloke who performs in the theater on Thursdays; looks normal enough for a test subject. I heard he's being moved up into the Alpha Programme. He reacts well to the plasmids and with the latest one being so successful, he's more controllable, so…"

"There going to push him farther. See what they can get out of him? Pathetic really, were pulling strings with the Alphas; not one lives through the first few days."

Silence as both ponder, relive memories of death and failure.

Until.

"Didn't the last one kill Suchong?"

A pause.

"Don't you go mindin' bout who killed Suchong."

"Oh…"

The truth.

He is moved to another unit, another cage with enforced walls and little light. Standing he takes up most of its room, but it's better than the quarantine chambers he was once forced into for days. He can move here. Breathe that bit better. He has a bed again.

Life continues on as before.

They raise him from fevered dreams of wonderland, strap him down, pump plasmids into his altered system, leaving him lying eagle-spread staring at the ceiling, listening, drooling his memories away. Drip by drip.

"What is this," he thinks hazily, and subconsciously moans in his tongue-less tone, "This…these people. This music. This…this…dream…of…what am…I, now…"

His heart-rate drops and the beeps of the machines around him increase; the white-coats panic.

And he fades to sweet nothingness.

His skin is on fire, as though flames lick his flesh, melting and boiling his organs; his bones are being broken, again and again and aga-Pins are being forced through his eyes, to the back of his skull, splitting the bone, his vision is red from all the blood; and he is screaming, roaring, thundering, for the pain to stop, for the madness to end; to just end, to die.

They increase the dosage.

The suck and gurgle of fluid flowing through the pipes into his flesh and beyond, the ticking of timers shallow him; the murmurs of madness around him seem teasing.

He simply adds his cries to the music that only he can hear.

Well done, they whisper and laugh.

And once more, all fades to black.

A long time ago, he dreams, a man once stood at the bottom of the ocean and looked upon a city through a window, a small shadow against a colossal Utopia.

A long time ago, he dreams, a man had been taken from his life above and forced to live the life of a lie below.

Once upon a time, he remembers, he had been locked away in the dark and tortured and ruined…forgotten.

When he wakes, this time, he is alone, in his new cell on his bed. He inspects himself like routine; his body hums to him as he raises his hand. His veins glow in the darkness of his cell with the flow of ADAM circulating his system and there is a pipe producing from his nose to a oxygen tank hooked on the wall.

It hurts to move.

He imagines the tonics flowing through his veins and arteries, spreading to his muscles and limbs, each beat of his heart pumping them; the two scarlet and sapphire figure-fluids of ADAM and EVE, twisting their way into all that he is, changing him until he doesn't even know who or what he is anymore.

His clothes have been removed.

His hand returns to his side on the bed. He cant bring himself to think, it all hurts too much and somewhere his mind tells him that this is all good; just stop thinking, just stop thinking, just stop…

So he returns to his dreams.

The table he sits on is freezing. It reminds him of the theatre in a twisted way, of a fistful of death-ice from his fingertips and cold, cold veins. He is being inspected by a white-coat, a man with large ears and a thick line of hair above his top lip; his name is Dr. G. Alexander, or so his overall states.

Dr. G Alexander is taking measurements of each of his limbs this evening and so it makes sense as to why his rags have been removed and why the table he so very cold on his bare flesh. As the white-coated man works away, he keeps still and watches him work, feeling strange to be sitting up as he is examined. He can see around him and is not forced to stare unblinkingly up at the ceiling or at a flashing screen; its much more interesting this way, much more to see.

Watching G. Alexander as he works stirs something within him and it takes awhile to find the source of discomfort.

Alexander's hands are very much like his own, their structures are the same only…only his are different in that the skin that covers them is paler, so pale that the luminous veins underneath show through and where the doctors are thick with tissue, his are lumpy with pronouncing bones, married with scars and hairless. He knows the doctor is a normal man, maybe he has a touch of Adam in him, maybe he doesn't, yet he is sane enough to know that he does not look like the doctor; as a normal man.

Looking down, his chest is a mass of bones and stitches, bruised tissue and metal merging with skin; a rainbow, he thinks, of colour, a rainbow underneath the ocean. Pale, pale skin, blues and yellows fading to brown and red, purple and black, the shine of metal reflecting-the centre of it all-the glow of Adam altered organs and veins.

"I'm a work of art," he states, enlightenment dawning, but all Gilbert Alexander hears is a chilling whale erupted from Subject Delta's throat.

"Are you….all right?" he questions unsure, afraid, yet he does not step away, he has read enough to know that Delta is not stupid or completely without freewill; he can understand him if he wants too and will not harm him without reason.

The man on the table looks up and meets his eyes-they're a horrible sight, much like those of the Gatherers, aglow from the high doses of Adam in the blood system-and he shrugs, a movement of bony shoulders and frail-like arms.

Of course he isn't "all right", how thoughtless of him, Delta must be in great pain.

And yet…he carries on with his measurements, recording the details. He is once again ignorant to the man sitting before him who has just realised he is a miracle.

Delta remains quiet for the rest of the inspection.

Dr. G. Alexander pencils in a cocktail of Sports Boost and Armoured Shell tonic to Delta's next schedule, for good measure.

And life goes on, and on, and…

A/N: I only remembered I had posted this during one of my replays of Bioshock during the week. So I decided to try and get back into the writing spirit and coughed this up. It's been awhile...

I will-plan/aim to-rewrite/edit this all in due time. And I know it's all scattered about and broken but thats...how I want it to be, I see Deltas life and mind as a shattered, broken thing thats being turned into something he doesnt understand yet I want to show the pain he, as a man, feels and the life he had and is slowly being forced to forget... I'm also sorry about the page rulers, nothing else will stick for me when I save...I friking hate them...

Thanks for reading!