BioShock Rapture

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 downOn the long night-time of that town;But light from out the lurid seaStreams up the turrets silently—Gleams up the pinnacles far and freeUp 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.