A Different Lighthouse

Chapter 5

Armitage hated this.

He watched stiffly, several paces behind, as Ben carried the little monster he'd decided to adopt on his shoulders. To say she gave him the creeps would be an understatement. Her eyes were no longer vacant, now a bright and piercing blue that Ben had apparently liked so much he named her for them, so that was one improvement. That was about all that had improved, though. She was still dirty, and carried her syringe in her hand like it was a beloved toy, her gaze eerily serene as she stared at their surroundings.

Creepy.

Blue sat up straighter with a start, and some wild part of Armitage's brain wondered if she could read his fucking mind, before she thrust out a grubby finger straight ahead. "I smell ADAM, Ben!"

Ben frowned, looking up at her and holding more tightly to her legs so she didn't topple over. "You smell it?"

"Makes sense. So they don't go drainin' saps with old blood," Armitage muttered. "Might as well let her do her thing. She can give that ADAM to you. Keep you supplied."

Ben grimaced, looking unsure. "I made her better though, didn't I? Why does she still want to do it?"

"That'd be the mental conditioning," Armitage sighed, looking around anxiously. He had an odd feeling, like there were eyes on them. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. "Just let her down, Ben. Ain't gonna hurt no one. They're already dead."

After another moment of hesitation Ben sighed, reaching and lifting Blue off of his shoulders before setting her on her feet. She grinned eagerly, grabbing onto three of his fingers and dragging him along, her other hand still clutching her glinting syringe.

"You seem to know an awful lot about all this," said Ben, still allowing himself to be pulled. Armitage clenched his jaw as he kept his eyes forward, avoiding Ben's searching gaze. "Thought you were just a nobody living in the slums?"

"A nobody sure, but I ain't stupid," Armitage retorted, sounding a bit more impatient than he'd meant to. Ben was catching on alarmingly quick. "You've been around as long as I have, and you meet some people."

"I guess so..."

Blue let Ben's fingers go as they approached a corpse, grinning excitedly as she dropped to her knees. Armitage grimaced and averted his eyes as she stuck the long needle into the poor bastard's chest, pressing the trigger and extracting bright red ADAM from his blood. Ben seemed unable to look away, even as his face went a little white.

"Gods, why?" he asked softly, and something odd pulled at Armitage's heart. "Why little girls? Why... any of this?"

Armitage let out a rough breath through his nose, his eyes anywhere but Ben as he made a show of looking out for Splicers. He opened his mouth to give a half-assed reply but froze, blinking as he noticed a security camera pointed straight at them. He swallowed thickly, a slight chill running down his spine. When he moved a little closer to Ben, the camera followed him.

Snoke had his eye on them, after all. Trust him not to believe Armitage could handle the job alone.

"Armitage? You okay?"

Armitage looked away from the camera, faced with Ben and Blue both staring at him, the former looking puzzled while the latter just stared blankly, a vial full of ADAM in her hand. Christ. Armitage had no idea what the hell Ben saw in that thing.