9 - ADAM Healing

Tenenbaum cleared her throat and said, “Now this man, Brougham, he is wounded—I will show you injury…” She lifted up the gown of the man on the gurney, and Fontaine winced to see a nasty, puckered, ragged tear in the man’s flesh, about seven inches long, haphazardly taped shut just above the groin. “He tries to use fishing hook to steal fish from fishery tanks! Ryan’s men catch him, slice him with his own hook. Now—we have extracted special material from slugs. Purified it. This material is made of special stem cells. Unstable. Highly adaptable. Please observe.”

She picked up the syringe and jammed it in the flesh just above the man’s groin. Brougham’s back arched, his body reacting—but he didn’t wake. Fontaine winced at the sight of the three-inch needle piercing deeply into the man’s gut.

“Now,” she said, “observe the wound.”

Fontaine did. And nothing happened.

“Ha!” Dr. Suchong said. “Maybe it not work this time. And your great theory—poof, Tenenbaum!”

Then the skin around the wound twitched, reddened, and the serrated flesh inside the wound seemed to writhe about … and seal shut. In a minute, only a faint scar remained of the ragged gash. It had healed before their eyes.

“I’ll be damned!” Fontaine said.

“I call it ADAM,” said Brigid Tenenbaum. “Because from Adam in the myth came life for mankind. This too brings life—it destroys damaged cells, replaces them with new ones—transferred by plasmids, unstable genetic material. Now, stem cells can be manipulated—their genes changed! We can make them this, make them that. If it can do this, heal instantly—what else can it do? Transform a man, a woman? Into what? Many things! Endless possibility!”

Suchong chewed at a thumbnail, staring at the experimental subject. Then he pointed. “You see there? On his head—some lesions!”

She shrugged. “Hardly visible. A few minor side effects…”

“Some may have much more! Your man with the miracle hands—that one behaves a little strangely now. And there are some curious marks on his arms. Like cancer! Uncontrolled cell growth!”

“So that’s the key,” Fontaine mused. “These stem-cell things and this … this ADAM? You can use it to change things up in a man—give him special abilities, like we discussed?”

“Precisely!” she said proudly.


- BioShock: Rapture, Chapter 9