BioShock Rapture

Just those three words, under a stylized, heroic image of a stoic, confident, clean-shaven man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders, fists on his hips, gazing with visionary intensity into the workingman’s future …

The one time she’d seen him, outside the café, he’d seemed like an ordinary man—good-looking, sturdy, but ordinary. And yet he was doing an extraordinary thing—risking Ryan’s constables by engaging in flagrant altruism.

At the very least, Atlas must be a charismatic man. Someone who could inspire her—end her feeling of aimlessness …

She turned to the bearded sentry cradling a shotgun at the blockade—a burly, unshaven man in a work shirt and oil-spotted blue jeans. “Listen—could you tell me … I saw him, once—in Pauper’s Drop. Atlas. He was passing out supplies. I’d … I’d like to talk to him. Maybe I could help. When I saw him in Pauper’s Drop, I just…” She shook her head. “I felt something.”

The sentry looked at her as if deciding whether or not she was sincere. Then he nodded. “I know what you mean. But I don’t know as I can trust you…”

Diane looked around to see if anyone was watching—then she took a wad of Rapture dollars out of her purse. “Please. This is all I could get hold of today. I’ll pay my way in. But I have to see him.”

He looked at the money, swallowed hard—then he reached out, grabbed it, and hid it in an inside coat pocket. “Hold up right here…”

The bearded sentry turned and called out to another, older sentry. They spoke in low tones; the bearded sentry turned and winked at her. The older guard hurried off. The sentry went back to his post, whistling to himself. With one hand he gestured to her: wait. Then he pretended not to see her.

Had she thrown away her bribe? Maybe she’d thrown away her life—spider splicers watched Apollo Square from high up on the walls. It was nippy, unevenly lit in Apollo Square tonight, and there were dead men rotting not so far away. The smell made her feel sick. She was still slightly drunk, the space around her whirling ever so slowly, and she thought she might throw up if she had to smell the dead bodies much longer.

But she wasn’t leaving. She was going to stick around till the splicers got her—or she got in to see Atlas.

If Ryan didn’t want her, she’d decided, maybe someone else would.

A woman hurried up to the barricade. “Atlas says okay, he’ll see you, McClintock,” said the woman. Diane tried not to stare at the woman’s scarred face—one of her eyesockets was covered over by scar tissue; her brown hair was matted. “Philo, you come on in with us.”

The shotgun-toting Philo nodded and gestured at Diane with the muzzle of the gun. “You go in ahead of me.”

Diane thought about backing out—but she stepped through the scrap-wood gate and followed them across Apollo Square to Artemis Suites. The one-eyed woman stepped over a low pile of trash in the doorway. Diane followed her into the reeking interior of the building.

Stomach lurching as she picked her way through moldy garbage, Diane entered a stairway that zigzagged up a graffiti-tagged concrete and steel shaft. They climbed four stories up, past drunks and groups of grubby children.

Her escorts took her through a doorway and down a carpeted, burn-scarred hall. The little bushy-haired woman never hesitated, and Philo clumped along behind Diane. The lights flickered again.

“Lights might go out,” Philo remarked, his voice a slow rumble. “Ryan’s turned the power off in the building. We got some jerry-rigged, but it ain’t reliable.”

“I got a flashlight,” the woman said. They came to another stairway, and, to Diane’s bafflement, this time they went down. This stairway was relatively clean, occupied only by the occasional bored sentry scratching himself and nodding as they passed.

Down and down they went, farther down than they’d gone up … down to a subbasement passageway.

Here, they passed under steam-shrouded pipes, their feet splashing through puddles, till they came to a small antechamber with a high, water-dripping ceiling. A Securis door was guarded by a grinning, shivering splicer in a ratty sweater and torn trousers, toes sticking out of his decaying shoes. He had the hard-core splicer’s red scrofula on his face, and he juggled three scythelike fish-gutting blades from hand to hand. The curved blades hissed close to the naked lightbulb on the ceiling, missing it by no more than a quarter inch. “Who’s the extra bitch, tittle-tattle tits?” the splicer asked in a scratchy voice, never pausing in juggling the blades.

“McClintock. Atlas says she can go in.”

“Says you, tittle-tattle tits—we’ll fry your bits if that ain’t it! Ha! Go ahead on in!”

The splicer stepped aside, still juggling, and “tittle-tattle tits” opened the Securis door for them. Diane hurried through, eager to get past the splicer.

They were in a lamplit utility area. Pipes and heating ducts came up through the floor near the walls. The room was warm and smelled of cigarette smoke and mildew and brine.