BioShock: Rapture

by John Shirley

  Bill shook his head, puzzling over it. “Strange I ’aven’t seen this bloke Atlas before. Been ’ere for years, thought I’d seen every wanker in this big leaky tank of a town.”

  Wallace gave him a poke in the ribs with an elbow. “Bill—look up there!”

  Bill looked at the ceiling, saw spider splicers creeping across it upside down, coming from three directions—converging right above him and Wallace.

  He looked around the edges of the square and saw the telekinetic splicer who’d killed Greavy. She was watching from the wall near the entrance to Artemis Suites.

  “They’re closing in on us, Bill.”

  “Right; we’ll take the better part of valor and back off—fast. Come on, mate!”

  They hurried back the way they’d come. They’d go the long way, through the checkpoint—they both had their ID cards—and then through the transparent passages between buildings to another bathysphere entrance to get where they were going. Or they wouldn’t get there at all.

  The splicers didn’t seem intent on pursuing them out of Apollo Square. Which confirmed Bill’s suspicion that they were somehow working for Atlas. They were remaining as his bodyguards …

  A word popped into Bill’s mind as they hurried through the passage, striding under a passing pod of dolphins. It was a simple, one-syllable word, summing up what he felt was coming from the inevitable confrontation between this new Kingfish and Andrew Ryan. War.

  More killing. More war. More danger for Elaine and Sophie.

  Something had to be done to stop it. Somehow it had to be defused …

  A frightening notion came to him. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But it lingered, whispering to him …

  Ryan Industries / Fontaine Futuristics

  1958

  “I really must get around to taking that sign down,” Ryan said as he and Karlosky walked under the words Fontaine Futuristics. “It’s Ryan Plasmids now.”

  They passed through the double doors and walked across the polished floors, past the sculpture of Atlas holding up the world.

  He glanced at his watch. He was half an hour behind time—the lights would dim for evening soon. The message from Suchong had been urgent: a crisis in ADAM production …

  Ryan ignored the lab workers hurrying past, clipboards in hand, and hurried up the stairs, Karlosky close beside him. He rarely worried about splicers or assassins with Karlosky around—the man had eyes in the back of his head. He wondered if plasmids could make that literally possible.

  They went through the sterilization air locks to find Suchong and Tenenbaum in a steamy lab, working over a sea slug in a bubbling tank. Frowning in concentration, Tenenbaum was using a pipette to draw an orange fluid from the sea slug’s horny tail. Ryan noticed that her hair didn’t seem to have been washed in days and her lab coat was splashed with stains, her nails black. There were blue circles under her eyes.

  Suchong glanced up as they entered and gave them each a short bow. Tenenbaum withdrew the pipette and released its contents into a test tube. Ryan stepped closer to inspect the sea slug—the creature quivered in its bath of seawater, but otherwise seemed almost lifeless.

  Ryan pointed at the sea slug. “Surely that’s not the last one?”

  Suchong sighed. “We have a few others in a suspension. But they are almost gone. The fighting of the raid, all the chaos—we lost them. Damage to the tanks. If only you’d warned us…”

  “Couldn’t risk that. You haven’t exactly earned my trust, Suchong, working for Fontaine.”

  Suchong inclined his head in something that passed for regret. “Ah. Suchong very sorry. Grave mistake to work for Fontaine. I should have known—the intelligent man work for men with more guns. Always the better policy. I will not make that mistake again. You have my loyalty, Mr. Ryan.”

  “Do I? We’ll see. Well, you sent for me and I can see the problem for myself. No sea slugs, no ADAM. Any suggestions, Doctor? What are we to do for ADAM? We have all these lunatic ADAM addicts running about … a whole industry could collapse. I’ve taken over the plasmids business—built the Hall of the Future to extol them. But if we run out of them—it’s all for nothing.”

  Tenenbaum looked up from the test tube. “There is a way, Mr. Ryan. Until we can learn to breed more slugs…”

  “And that is?”

  “Many men are dying and dead in Rapture. But before they die, there is a … how would you say it, a stage in their metabolism of plasmids … in which they create a refined ADAM inside them. It is deposited in the torso. And we believe…”

  She looked at Suchong, who nodded at Ryan. “Yes. It can be harvested. From the dead.”

  Karlosky grunted and shook his head. But said nothing. Ryan glanced at him. It was hard to startle Karlosky, but it seemed they’d done it.

  Ryan looked back at the sea slug. “You can get ADAM from the dead?”

  Suchong removed his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “Yes. But there is a certain way to do this—the ADAM must be sensed, and drawn up into the syringe properly—and correctly transported. Little Sisters are best suited for that process…”

  Tenenbaum shook her head. “But the girls are already … damaged. If we sent them to do the harvesting—who will protect them? They are…” She glanced at Ryan, then quickly away. “They are worth a lot of money. They will not trust ordinary guards … and we cannot trust ordinary men with them.”

  “So for that,” Suchong said, “we have developed hybrids, our cyborg sea workers. Gil Alexander has made great progress with the Alpha Series—Augustus Sinclair has, ah, leased out this Johnny Topside from Persephone. Subject Delta—he is bonded with the girl we took from the Lamb woman. Eleanor Lamb.”

  “Bonded?” Ryan asked, not sure he liked the sound of it.

  “The girls are to be bonded to the Alpha creatures. They are to be … surrogate fathers. Little ones call them big daddies. Most charming. The girls will be conditioned to work closely with them.”

  Tenenbaum made a small sound of acknowledgment. “They do seem to need something, some symbol of adulthood they can feel comfortable with…”

  The conversation was getting ever more peculiar. Ryan wasn’t sure he understood what they were planning.

  But he knew a solution was needed. And he liked the neatness of harvesting ADAM from the dead. It closed the circle, somehow: an unexpected link in the Great Chain.

  “What exactly will you need from me?” he asked, finally.

  Near Fighting McDonagh’s Bar

  1958

  This won’t look too good, Sullivan thought. Me being in charge of law enforcement in Rapture—and being the drunkest son of a bitch in Rapture tonight …

  He stood outside McDonagh’s tavern, swaying, wondering how late it was. Long after midnight—lights had already been turned down. Couldn’t even make out his watch.

  How much money had he lost at the card table, in the back room? Four hundred Rapture dollars at least. Poker. His downfall. Shouldn’t have drunk so much. Might’ve folded some of those hands before they got expensive. Maybe Shouldn’t have gotten in the game …

  But his old gambling bugaboo was back—and with a vengeance. Only way he could get his mind off the mess that Rapture was becoming—and his failure to keep the splicers at bay. He was sure Ryan was starting to look at him like he was a useless old drunk.

  Maybe he needed to get married. Get married again, a nice warm wife to keep him in line.

  He shuddered. A wife. How do guys like McDonagh do it?

  He sighed and started off toward the stairs. He just had his hand on the metal door to the ramp when he heard a boom from behind it and a keen whistling sound.

  Rogue splicers.

  The corridor was twisting around from the booze and his mouth was paper dry. Too drunk to deal with this. “Gotta get backup…” He licked his lips and put his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket. But then again—he was top cop. Had to show it. “Fuck backup.”

  He drew
his gun, opened the door, took two steps through—and was slammed in the chest by the force of a Sonic Boom plasmid. The sonic shock wave made him stagger back painfully hard against the doorframe. A leering, goggle-eyed splicer in a ragged T-shirt was crouched behind a tumble of crates. “Gotcha big-badge! Or should I say big ass!” He pointed his hand to fire off another Sonic Boom, but Sullivan, sobering fast, slipped back through the door, taking cover to one side—and a cackling made him look up, through the doorway, to see a female splicer clinging flylike to the ceiling, wearing only yellowed underwear and a brassiere, her long dirty hair hanging down like Spanish moss. She was pointing one grimy hand down at the Sonic Boomer and twirling her finger—a whistling sound became a windy roaring and a small cyclone appeared, whirling bits of trash, picking up the empty crates to smash them against the metal walls. “Ha ha haaaa!” she cackled. “Care to go for a spin!”

  The Sonic Boomer yelled and tried to scramble clear, but the expanding Cyclone Trap plasmid caught him, jerked him off his feet, spun him like a ragdoll in the air—and dropped him with a thump. He yelled in outrage as the spider splicer giggled.

  Completely out of their gourds, Sullivan thought.

  “Two plasmids from one lunatic,” Sullivan muttered, trying to get a bead on her in the dim corridor with his gun. She suddenly dropped down, landing catlike, and spun to face him. “Puppet cop, cop it, pup! That’s you!” She made a gesture, and suddenly a second splicer appeared, almost her twin, in front of her and to one side. Sullivan fired convulsively—and the bullet simply passed through the flickering image.

  A third plasmid. “Target dummy.”

  She cackled again—and then looked startled, her eyes widening. She looked down to see a curved fish-gutting knife blade protruding under her breastbone, spurting blood. She toppled forward, dying, and the Sonic Boomer who’d stabbed her from behind leered … and gestured—Wham—Sullivan was flung to skid down the ramp on his back …

  Dazed, he lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, gasping for air—then he sat up … and looked through the open door, about four paces off at what he thought was the splicer, sneaking around in the shadows.

  Sullivan got up, dusted himself off, put his gun in his pocket, and said, “Screw this.”

  He turned and walked back to the bar.

  Hall of the Future

  1958

  Diane McClintock was on one of her long, solitary walks through Rapture. She knew it was dangerous. She had a gun in her purse.

  She had four cocktails in her, too, and she didn’t much care about the danger. She was heading somewhere, in a roundabout way. Pauper’s Drop. But she couldn’t bring herself to go there directly. She was afraid Andrew might be watching her, through the cameras; through his agents. She had to take the roundabout route so he’d never guess she was hoping to get a close look at the man they called Atlas …

  She strolled through the museum, the new Hall of the Future, with its videotaped displays glorifying plasmids—all quite ironic, considering some of the horrors plasmids had brought.

  She passed onward. Footsteps echoing, she wandered through the livid colored light of Rapture; she rambled past pistons pumping mysteriously in wall niches, past the steaming pool of the baths, under iridescent panes of crystal, through high-ceilinged atriums of brass and gold and chrome, vast chambers that seemed as grandiose as any palace ballroom. A palace, that’s what Rapture seemed to her, an ornate palace of Ryanium and glass, swallowed by the sea—which was ever so slowly digesting it.

  And sometimes it seemed to Diane that everyone in Rapture had already died. That they were all ghosts—the ghosts of royalty and servants. She remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s sunken city. She’d read all of Poe in trying to educate herself to impress Andrew and the others. Again and again she’d returned to The City in the Sea. She remembered Poe’s lines—some seemed especially apt now …

  Resignedly beneath the sky.

  The melancholy waters lie.

  No rays from holy heaven come down

  On the long night-time of that town;

  But light from out the lurid sea

  Streams up the turrets silently—

  Gleams up the pinnacles far and free

  Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

  Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

  She sighed, and she walked onward, her head throbbing. Still half-drunk.

  Acting as if she went toward Pauper’s Drop on a whim, she passed through the transparent corridor, and the metal door. Down a flight of steps …

  Sullen-eyed tramps lolled against the walls of the buildings, under intricate scrawls of graffiti. They lay about smoking, drinking, talking—and looking at her with an unsettling interest.

  Maybe it was time to take refuge in the Fishbowl Café. It looked civilized enough.

  She hurried into the café, sat in a booth by the dusty window, and ordered coffee from the frowzy, gum-chewing waitress who already had the pot in her hand. “Sure, honey,” the waitress said, giving her brown curls a toss. “You want some pie? It’s seapalm pie, but they put a lotta sugar in it, not too bad…”

  “No, thank you,” Diane murmured, wondering if she could ask this woman about Atlas …

  The waitress bustled off to deal with a thuggish-looking man at the other end of the row of booths.

  Diane McClintock sipped coffee, looking out the window, hoping the caffeine would stop the thudding in her head.

  Risky being here. She could easily fall into the hands of rogue splicers. But her depression had been whispering to her lately, It might be better if they got you …

  Still, Rapture was in a time of relative peace, with Fontaine dead. She hoped it would last.

  Atlas was said to come to Pauper’s Drop pretty regularly. He moved about undercover—he was “wanted for questioning” by Sullivan’s bunch. He was on the track to end up in Persephone for sure.

  Why am I here? she wondered. But she knew. She wanted to see this man for herself. Her encounter with Margie outside Sir Prize, the woman’s sincerity, had planted a seed.

  Andrew would hate her for coming. But that was part of why she was here. Atlas was a man with something Andrew Ryan was missing—a real heart.

  She was startled from her fumination by a commotion outside. Several men with shotguns were shouting at the crowd of unemployed. They seemed to be getting them organized into a line. To her surprise, the ragtag crowd passively lined up …

  Then a man came striding onto the scene, followed by several others carrying large baskets. The man in the lead somehow drew all eyes to himself. He was a handsome figure of a man with a fine head of hair, a mustache, a cleft chin, and broad shoulders. He dressed like a workingman—with a white shirt, sleeves rolled up; suspenders; simple work trousers; boots. But he carried himself like a man in charge. Yet there was no harsh edge of authority about him. His expression was kindly, compassionate, as he took a basket from the man behind him, began quietly passing out things to the people in line. The first one, a woman with gray-streaked hair and a lined face, a tattered frock, took a package, and Diane could read the woman’s trembling lips: “Thank you. Oh thank you…”

  He spoke briefly to her, patted her arm, and then passed on to the next in line, personally handing out a pair of shoes; a sack that seemed to brim with canned goods.

  Could this really be Atlas?

  The waitress came to Diane’s tables, asked in a bored voice, “You want some more of what passes fer coffee around here, honey, or what?”

  “What I’d really like…” Diane took a ten-dollar bill—with Ryan’s picture on it—and tucked it into the woman’s apron pocket. “Is to know if that man out there is who I think it is…”

  The waitress looked around nervously, looked into her apron pocket, then nodded. With a lowered voice she said, “Him … he calls himself Atlas. Only t’ing I know: the lady lives down the hall from me wouldn’t have nothing to eat, weren’t for him. He’s helping people, that one. Give
s out free stuff every week. Talks about a new order.”

  The waitress hurried off, and Diane turned to stare out the window at the man called Atlas. He was gentle but powerful— the kind of man she truly wanted to meet …

  She hesitated. Did she dare go out and talk to Atlas? Suppose Andrew were having her watched?

  It was too late. There was shouting, an alarm on the concourse outside the café—constables were coming. Atlas waved at his charges—and then hurried off around the corner. Her chance was gone.

  But she made up her mind. One way or another, she would meet this man …

  She would stand face-to-face with Atlas.

  Fort Frolic Shooting Gallery

  1958

  They were alone in the long, narrow shooting gallery, firing at man-shaped targets. The air smelled of gunsmoke; brass littered the floor. Bill stood just behind his wife, looking over her shoulder. “That’s it, love—take aim and shoot ’im right between the eyes.”

  Elaine winced and lowered the revolver. “Do you have to put it that way, Bill? Between the eyes? It’s just a paper target…”

  Bill McDonagh grinned ruefully. “Sorry, darlin’, but—you said you wanted this for self-defense! And those rogue splicers don’t play around—” He put his hand on her shoulder and added more gently, “If you’re going to defend yourself against them, you’ve got to shoot to kill. I know it’s bloody awful. It’s been hard for me to shoot at these blokes too…”

  Elaine took a deep breath, raised the gun at the end of her arm, clasped it with both hands, and aimed at the silhouette at the other end of the shooting gallery.

  She grimaced and squeezed the trigger, blinking as the gun went crack.

  Bill sighed. She missed the target completely. “Right. This time, let out a long breath before you fire, squeeze the trigger gently, like, and—”