BioShock Rapture

A man in front of Bill went rigid and jerked about like a marionette dangled by a palsied hand, electrocuted by a lightning-throwing plasmid. As he fell, Bill fired a burst past him at the splicer: a black-haired, dark-eyed woman in shorts. She was half-hidden behind a stub of pylon, aiming her electrically sparking hand at Bill. But the tommy gun split her chest and face asunder, and she fell backward into the water, which was clouding up with crimson billows—the blood of fallen men and women; human and rogue splicer.

God, Bill thought. Ryan’s got me killing women! Oh lord, forgive me. What would Elaine think of me now?

But a woman spider splicer on the ceiling fired a pistol at him, the bullet grazing his ribs, and he returned fire without hesitating—because he had to. The woman leapt from view.

On the deck of the little boat tied up near the wharf was a wild-eyed, patchy-haired woman pushing a baby carriage with one hand. She reached into the carriage, snatching out a hand grenade of some kind, tossing it in the air. Cavendish rushed her …

The bomb stopped in midair, then came arcing telekinetically toward him—and he threw himself down behind a stack of fish-reeking wooden crates. The crates caught most of the explosion, sending splinters rocketing like javelins—and someone behind him wailed in pain.

Bill got to his knees and peered through the smoke in time to see the woman’s head vanish in a cloud of pink and gray in the near-point-blank double-barrel shotgun blast fired by Cavendish. The woman sagged—

But someone else stepped from the small cabin of the little tugboatlike vessel—Frank Fontaine himself.

Fontaine had a revolver clutched in his hand, was grimacing and wild-eyed as he fired it almost randomly at them—who did he think he was, John Wayne? Didn’t seem like Fontaine’s style.

“I’ll take you all down with me!” shouted Fontaine. “You’ll never bring Frank Fontaine down without a fight!”

There was something weirdly theatrical about the way the man did it.

Fontaine reached into his coat, drew another revolver, and now he had one in each hand, was firing with both, his teeth bared, his eyes wild. A constable went down, shot through the neck by one of Fontaine’s rounds.

A splicer cackled in murderous delight. “That’s it, make ’em spout pretty, Frank!”

Bill took a shot at Fontaine and missed.

A constable rushed from a cloud of gunsmoke, shouting at Fontaine—and Fontaine dodged back behind the superstructure, circled it, came around behind the constable, shot the man in the back of his head. Then Fontaine dropped his pistol and scooped up the fallen constable’s tommy gun—turned and fired both his guns, a pistol in his left hand, the machine gun in his right.

Bill noticed Cavendish slipping through the water, wading, head low, toward the boat. Bill fired at Fontaine to try and distract him from Cavendish, who’d slipped around to the back of the boat—then Bill had to flatten as Fontaine loosed a burst his way. Bullets strafed just over his head.

“If Frank Fontaine goes down, you’re all goin’ down with me!” Fontaine shouted.

Then Cavendish stepped around the superstructure of the vessel and shoved his shotgun in Fontaine’s belly and—grinning—pulled the trigger, blasting Frank Fontaine off the boat, back into the water. The shotgun blast nearly cut him in half.

Cavendish turned to them and shouted in triumph, waving the shotgun over his head. “I done it! I got Frank Fontaine!” Then he ducked behind the pilothouse of the boat to avoid a bomb flying at him. Bill lost sight of him behind the smoky explosion, ducking as a blade flashed by. He turned and fired his tommy gun at the blade-flinging splicer, who ducked for cover.

Bill spotted Sullivan farther down the wharf, backing up from a leadhead. The gun-toting splicer was a barefoot man in overalls leaping about the wharf with unnatural agility, seeming to dodge Sullivan’s bullets—moving so fast Sullivan couldn’t get a bead. Leaping, the leadhead fired at Sullivan, who caught a round in his left shoulder and staggered with the impact.

Bill was already tracking the splicer with his weapon, and he fired the last of his rounds, shattering the splicer’s head as its body twisted from the top of a pylon and fell through the thick gunsmoke to splash awkwardly into the water.

Sullivan, grimacing with pain, turned to Bill with a look of gratitude. “Come on, retreat goddammit! It’s an ambush!”

Cavendish came rushing out of the smoke, coughing out, “Sullivan—I got Fontaine!”

“Just retreat, goddammit, there’s too many splicers!”