BioShock: Rapture

by John Shirley

“Oh Bill…” Elaine lowered the gun, her lips quivering, eyes welling with tears. “This is so horrible. Having to … Mr. Ryan never said it’d be like this…”

  Bill glanced at the door to see if anyone was listening. They seemed to be alone. But you never knew for sure anymore …

  “Bill … it’s just … I can’t raise Sophie here, in a place where I have to…”

  He put his arm around her. “I know, love. I know.”

  She put her face on his shoulder and wept. “I want to leave Rapture…” she whispered.

  “Elaine … darlin’ … got to be careful where you talk like that…” He licked his lips, thinking, Listen to me. Turning into a craven bastard. “One thing at a time, love. Thing is—Fontaine’s gone but … word is, Atlas is making some kind of deal with the rogue splicers. He’s got a lot of ADAM stored up, somewhere. Got ’em workin’ for him. And he’s going to make some kind of move—he’s not just handing out food and pamphlets, love. All of us on this side of the fence—we’re going to have to defend ourselves. It’s more dangerous out there than ever…”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with a kerchief she took from his coat pocket. She took a deep breath and then nodded. “Sure, okay, Bill. I just hope you’re right about who we’ve got to shoot at.” She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “Far as I can tell—they might come at us from either side of the fence.” She cocked the gun. “I guess I’d better … be ready for anything.”

  Elaine raised the gun and took aim at the paper outline. She let out a long, slow breath, centered the gunsights on the target’s head, and squeezed the trigger.

  Bill McDonagh’s Flat

  1958

  It was Christmas Eve. Bill, Karlosky, and Redgrave sat around a card table in Bill’s living room, playing poker in the light from the Christmas tree. Two bottles, one nearly empty, stood beside a plate littered with cookie crumbs. Bill was beginning to feel he’d drunk too much. Sometimes the cards in his hand seemed to recede into the distance, and the room swiveled in his peripheral vision.

  “Wonder if this Atlas is going to be the problem Mr. Ryan thinks,” Redgrave said, frowning over his cards. “All we got is rumors. That he’s working with the splicers, givin’ ’em ADAM. Where’s he get all that ADAM?”

  “A lot of Fontaine’s supply seems to’ve done a vanishing act,” Bill said, trying to see his own cards. Were those diamonds or hearts? “When they raided his place—most of the stuff was gone. Ryan’s had Suchong hard at it making new stuff. Sometimes I wish he’d just let ’em…” He didn’t finish saying he wished plasmids would run out completely. Karlosky might report that to Ryan. And Ryan was not in a mood to have his policies questioned.

  Redgrave raised the pot, Bill folded, and Karlosky called. Redgrave showed three aces.

  Karlosky scowled at Constable Redgrave and threw down his cards. “You black bastard; you cheat me again!”

  The black cop chuckled and scooped up the poker chips. “I beat you, that’s what I do, I beat you like an old rug…”

  “Bah! Black son of a bitch!”

  Shuffling the cards, Bill looked at Redgrave to see how he took Karlosky’s invective.

  To his relief, he saw Redgrave looking gleeful, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he stacked his new chips. “Not surprised an ignorant Cossack son of a bitch like you can’t play poker … But a Russian not being able to hold his drink? That’s sad, man!”

  “What!” Karlosky pretended to tremble with rage. “Not hold drink!”

  He grabbed the unlabeled bottle—he had made the vodka himself from potatoes raised in Rapture hydroponics—and poured the transparent fluid into their glasses, slopping almost as much on the table. “Now! We see who can drink! A black bastard or a real man! Bill—you drink too!”

  “Nah, I’m not a real man; I’m a married man! My wife’ll kick me ass if I come to bed any more bladdered’n I am…” He’d had three shots of the crude vodka—more than enough.

  “He’s right about that!” Elaine said, scowling theatrically from the doorway to the bedroom. “I’ll kick him right out of bed!” But she laughed.

  Bill watched as Elaine went to adjust an ornament on the Christmas tree, yawning in her terrycloth robe. It was a curious thing how he could look at his wife with her hair rumpled, her face without makeup, her feet bare under a terrycloth robe that was far from enticing boudoir wear, and still feel a deep desire for her. It wasn’t the vodka—he often felt that way seeing her about the flat.

  “Is nice Christmas tree!” Karlosky said, toasting her.

  The small Christmas tree was made out of wire and green paper, with a few colored lights—they were the only Christmas decoration Ryan allowed. No stars, no angels, no wise men, no baby Jesus. “A secular Christmas is a merry Christmas!” went the poster, put up in Apollo Square right before the holiday. The poster showed a winking dad dropping a Bible into a trashcan with one hand while handing his little girl a teddy bear with the other.

  “Don’t stay up too late with these drunken louts, Bill!” Elaine said, rubbing her eyes, putting on a frown again.

  “Ha!” Karlosky said, punching Redgrave playfully in the shoulder. “His wife whips him like little boy, eh!”

  Bill laughed, shaking his head. “Sorry, love. We’re about done playing cards.”

  Her look of mock disapproval vanished and she winked. “No, you guys go on and play your cards! Have fun. I just came out to tell you not to be too loud so you don’t wake up Sophie.”

  Redgrave turned her a bright smile. “Ma’am, thank you for havin’ me to Christmas Eve supper. Means a lot to me!” He raised his glass to her.

  “Glad you could be here, Constable Redgrave. Goodnight.”

  “Da!” Karlosky said. “Happy holiday, Mrs.!” He turned fiercely to Redgrave. “Now—drink up, you black bastard!”

  Redgrave laughed, and they drank their vodka, clinking their glasses together when they were done.

  “Okeydokey!” Karlosky said, lowering his voice as Elaine went to bed, “we will play more cards, you lose money to me—and we see if you really can drink … black bastard!”

  “Cossack devil! Pour me another!”

  Kashmir Restaurant

  1958

  On New Year’s Eve, Bill McDonagh sat with his wife at a corner table of the luxurious restaurant, near the wall-high window looking out into the churning depths of the sea. They had taken off their silvery party masks and set them on the table next to the champagne bottle.

  He glanced out the window. The illuminated skyscraper-style buildings, seen through a hundred yards of rippling seawater, seemed to shimmy to the music: a Count Basie swing number.

  Bill winked at Elaine, and she returned him a strained smile. She was pretty in her pearl-trimmed, low-cut white gown, but, despite all the care she’d taken, she still looked a bit haggard. Elaine didn’t sleep well anymore. None of them did. Lately, a bloke trying to sleep in Rapture was always unconsciously listening for an alarm to go off or the sounds of a security bot taking on a rogue splicer.

  It was chilly near the window. The tuxedo wasn’t much protection against the cold. But he didn’t want to sit any closer to the entourage waiting for Ryan to show up: a group at several tables near the fountain. Sander Cohen was wearing a feathery mask and babbling madly away at a bored-looking Silas Cobb. Diane McClintock, wearing a gold party mask edged in diamonds, sat stiffly at a small table reserved for her and Ryan—she sat there alone, watching the door and muttering into her tape recorder. Ryan had gone on an errand to Hephaestus and was going to give some kind of New Year’s address over the radio.

  “Well, love…” Bill said, toasting his wife with the champagne glass. Trying to pretend he was enjoying himself. “In just a few minutes it’ll be 1959…”

  Elaine McDonagh nodded slowly and forced another weak smile. The fear flared in her eyes, then dutifully hid itself again. She gave him the brave look that always tore at his heart. “It is! It’s almos
t New Year’s, Bill…” She looked at the other tables, filled with revelers in jeweled masquerade costumes and masks. They were waving noisemakers, laughing, talking loudly over the music, doing their best to celebrate. Her gaze took in the bunting, the banners, the circular hot-pink neon sign, specially made up for the party: Happy New Year 1959. “It’s funny, Bill—all these years down here … Sophie growing up without seeing the sun … now the war … and it’s almost 1959 … Time passes all funny in Rapture, doesn’t it? It’s slow and fast both…”

  Bill nodded. Elaine was increasingly homesick, and scared. But he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon the man who had taken him out of the loo and made him a real engineer. Sure, Ryan was giving way to hypocrisy—but he was only human. And maybe it was true that Rapture had to go through this transition period before getting back on track. They just had to clear out the Atlas types, the worst of the splicers, and Lamb’s followers.

  He noticed Elaine staring around at the armed men, the constables standing guard near the walls. The guards weren’t wearing masquerade masks. Scores of gunmen, there to protect this exclusive gathering from rogue splicers.

  Constable was the one job you could stand a good chance of getting, if you were out of work in Rapture—because the mortality rate for constables was so high.

  Bill was glad to see Brenda bringing each constable a flute of champagne on a tray to get ready for midnight. Made it seem more festive.

  A gun in one hand, a champagne glass in the other, he thought ruefully. That’s Rapture.

  He had a pistol under his coat; Elaine had one in her pearl-beaded white purse.

  “Do you think Sophie’s all right?” Elaine asked, toying with her glass, looking anxiously at the clock.

  “Sure, she’ll be fine.”

  “Bill, I want to go home as soon as we get past New Year’s Eve. Like at twelve-oh-five, okay? I don’t like to leave Sophie with the sitter long in this place … I don’t know if Mariska can use a gun, really. I mean, I left her one, but…”

  “Don’t worry; we’ll leave a few minutes after midnight, love.”

  The Count Basie song finished, and Duke Ellington started. Wearing their gawdy party masks, a half dozen couples were dancing in a cleared space between the tables, forced smiles held stiffly on their faces.

  Bill wondered what music the rest of the world was listening to. Music in Rapture had to be outdated. There were rumors about something called rock ’n’ roll.

  Trying to change Elaine’s mood, he took her hand, pulled her to her feet, got her dancing to the Duke Ellington number. They used to love going dancing together in New York …

  Then the song stopped, simply cut off in midtune, and the countdown started, led by a giddy Sander Cohen: “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year!”

  Bill pulled Elaine close for the midnight kiss …

  That’s when the explosion came. The doors exploded inward, knocking three constables like rag dolls into the center of the room. Bill shoved their table over for partial cover, pushed Elaine to the ground behind the tabletop, and covered her with his body. Machine-gun rounds ricocheted from the bulletproof windows to slam through tuxedos, to wound squealing women in their glittering finery. Elaine was screaming something about Sophie. Another bomb flew into the room and detonated—body parts spun overhead, spraying blood. “Auld Lang Syne” was playing as machine-gun bullets raked the room—as if the gunfire were part of the New Year’s Eve revelry. Screams … More gunshots …

  Faces that seemed frozen, mocking: the invading splicers were wearing masquerade-party masks—domino masks, feathered masks, golden masks …

  Andrew Ryan’s voice came from the public address, at that moment, as he made his New Year’s speech …

  “Good evening, my friends. I hope you are enjoying your New Year’s Eve celebration; it has been a year of trials for us all. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that Rapture is your city…”

  Bill peered around the edge of the table, saw a splicer in a black mask yelling, “Long live Atlas!”

  Another, running through the cloud of smoke at the shattered doors, bellowed: “Death to Ryan!”

  “… It was your strength of will that brought you here, and with that strength you shall rebuild. And so, Andrew Ryan offers you a toast. To Rapture, 1959. May it be our finest year.”

  “Diane!” Elaine shouted.

  Bill turned to see Diane McClintock crawling past on her hands and knees, dazed face bloodied, her green dress had become red-stained rags. “Diane—get down!” he called.

  Beyond her, some of the constables were ducking behind the bar—and grinning. Bill realized that some of them had been in on this. A security bot went whistling by overhead, firing at a thuggish splicer cartwheeling into the room. A nitro splicer in a fur-fringed white mask was throwing another bomb, which blew up on a table under which three men in tuxes crouched—their tuxedos and their flesh mingled wetly in the blast.

  Bill hoped to God the rogue splicers had the common sense not to throw too many bombs near the windows. The windows were supposed to be blast proof, but they could only take so much.

  “Come on, Elaine, we’re off!” he said gruffly, trying to get some steel into her spine. “And bring your purse.”

  He tugged out his pistol, the two of them scrambling like doughboys under barbed wire till they were under one of the few tables still standing. A bleeding thuggish splicer was crawling by like a hungry alligator, laughing insanely, his mask down around his neck. ADAM scars crisscrossed the man’s face in livid pink that somehow matched the neon pink of the Happy New Year 1959 sign. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole in the crawling splicer’s neck as he sang croakily, “I’m a little hair, pulled off a chin, about to go into a spin, down the drain drain drain—!” Then he noticed Bill and Elaine—and whipped a hooked blade at Bill’s face. Bill shot him in the forehead.

  The blade clattered on the floor. Elaine groaned at the sight of the dead man. They crawled onward.

  Bill risked a look over his shoulder and saw a group of loyal constables, including Redgrave and Karlosky, firing above an overturned table at spider splicers crawling across the ceiling near the blown-open doors. A red-masked nitro splicer made a bomb fly through the air with the power of his mind—it flew past the table, then doubled back. Karlosky and Redgrave dove to the side, and the bomb went off. Redgrave rolled, wounded. A shotgun blasted nearby—Rizzo firing over a table at the nitro splicer. The splicer’s face vanished in a welter of red, and a grenade blew up in his hands, his body flying apart like a New Year’s party favor.

  Bill crawled onward, one arm over Elaine, who crept along beside him alternately sobbing and cursing. They’d reached the swinging doors into the back kitchen. “Okay, kid,” he whispered in her ear. “On three we jump up and run through them doors. Watch out for my pistol, love, I might have to fire it. One, two—three!”

  They were up and rushing through, Bill shouldering the door aside—and firing at a spider splicer hanging upside down from the low ceiling. Wounded, the splicer fell off onto the stove, clattering into pots of boiling water and lit gas burners. Shrieking in pain, the splicer flailed and tumbled off the stove and onto the floor.

  Bill and Elaine rushed past into the rear hall. Bill turned left; a gun banged just beside him. He turned to see Elaine pointing her own pistol, its muzzle smoking, her face contorted with anger as a nitro splicer fell back, his head shot open. A grenade fell from his hands and bounced to the floor—

  “Down!” Bill yelled, and dragged her behind a steel kitchen cart, covering her with his body—and then the bomb went off. The cart caught the blast and slammed into them with the shockwave, the steel cart cracking painfully into Bill’s right arm. “Ow, buggerin’ hell that hurts!”

  “Bill—are you all right?” Elaine asked, coughing as the smoke cleared.

  “I’m okay, except me bloody ears are ringing like a mad monk’s church bell! Come on, we got to get up,
love!”

  They made their way dizzily down the smoky hallway, eyes stinging. Gunfire rattled behind them and explosions shook the floor. Other people were running from the kitchen. He looked back and saw Redgrave stumbling along, wounded in the leg but game enough—Karlosky behind him, urging the wounded Redgrave along.

  Rizzo was turning to fire behind them through the door at splicers Bill couldn’t see. A swishing sound—and Rizzo shrieked, the scream becoming a gurgle as a curved blade buried itself in his throat. Rizzo fell back, blood gushing over his tuxedo …

  Bill fired at the door—a masked splicer jerked back. Elaine kept tugging on his arm, shouting about Sophie. He let her urge him through the emergency exit to the stairs, and they saw a group of white-faced, scared-looking constables a flight below, yelling up at them: “This way! Down here!”

  Hoping they weren’t heading into a trap, Bill and Elaine went with the constables.

  A blur of corridors, passages, a checkpoint, another, waving ID cards, an atrium, an elevator …

  Time did indeed seem all funny, weirdly collapsed, a telescope snapped shut …

  And then they were in their own flat, panting, Bill locking the door. Elaine with her purse in one hand and a gun in the other.

  “Hello!” called Mariska Lutz, their sitter, from the next room. “Back already? Have a good time?”

  Rapture Central Control, Ryan’s Office

  1959

  “It makes me half-crazed to think of it,” Ryan said, voice trembling. He balled the report in his hands and threw it into a corner. “On New Year’s Eve! The cold-blooded treachery of it! They expected me to be there! It was an attack on me—but it was also an attack on the heart and soul of Rapture. Our most accomplished men and women were in that room, Bill, celebrating the new year. And at least six constables betrayed us! We’re lucky Pat Cavendish acted quickly—he shot most of the treasonous scum. But, by God, we must root out any other bad apples.”

  He sounded bitter—but rational. Lately, Bill suspected that there was something twisted growing in Andrew Ryan …