BioShock Rapture

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!”