BioShock Rapture

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.