BioShock Rapture

She went to the child and embraced her. “I am sorry,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

Mercury Suites

1959

“What is the difference between a man and a parasite?” The words came over the public-address system, reverberating from the metal walls as Bill walked down the hall to Sullivan’s place. A camera swiveled to watch him as he came.

“A man builds,” came Andrew Ryan’s recorded voice. “A parasite asks, ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says, ‘Watch out or you might tread on the toes of God.’”

Bill was beginning to think the “parasite” might be right about that last one.

He knocked on the apartment door, and Sullivan himself opened it. The security chief glanced past him to make sure he was alone, then nodded. “Come on in.”

Bill could smell the booze on Sullivan’s breath, and the chief of security’s gait was unsteady as he walked away from the door. Bill followed him in and closed the door. Sullivan’s place was laid out pretty much like his own, but it was sparer—bachelor furnishings. And there was another feature, a good many “dead soldiers,” empty bottles on tables and desks, even the carpet.

Sullivan sat on the sofa, shoving an empty bottle out of the way to put a tape recorder down on the coffee table. Bill sat beside him. To their left was a big picture window into the undersea-scape. The building creaked in the current. A school of yellow-finned fish cruised by and suddenly changed direction, all of them at once darting away from the building’s lights with that mysterious unanimity they had.

“Drink?” Sullivan asked, his voice lifeless. His eyes were red-rimmed. It looked like he hadn’t slept in a while.

It was early for Bill, not yet five, but he didn’t want to seem like he was judging Sullivan. “Just a finger or two of whatever’s in that bottle there, mate.”

Sullivan poured it into a glass that hadn’t been clean in a long while, and Bill picked it up. “What’s all the rush and worry, Chief? Urgent notes from you popping out of the pneumo and all. I had to cut work early to get here on time.”

Sullivan turned to look at an unfinished red-and-black knitted blanket folded beside him on the sofa. He reached out with his free hand and caressed it, lips trembling. Then he tossed off his drink and put the glass down on the coffee table with a clack. “Ryan’s starting his little propaganda campaign, to make the Little Sisters thing seem all hunky-dory. Using kids to farm plasmids. That going to be hunky-dory with you, Bill?”

“Christ no. I don’t like plasmids—don’t like ’em double when they get ’em that way. Ryan says it’s only temporary, and what do you do with the orphans anyway, but…” He shook his head. “It can’t go on forever. Things are falling apart—the city and … the people. The whole place will come apart at the seams if we don’t…”

He broke off, wondering, suddenly, if he was being a fool, talking something close to sedition to Ryan’s chief of security. Was all this a setup? But Sullivan had been unhappy with his job for a long time, and he’d made Bill a kind of confidante. You had to trust someone sometime. And he knew Chief Sullivan, after all these years. Sullivan wasn’t much of an actor. Especially when he was drunk. This was for real.

“It’s already come apart at the seams, Bill,” Sullivan said slurringly. “I’ve got some recordings here—I’ve put them all on one tape. But they came from different times, different people…” He pressed the Play button on the tape recorder. “I want your opinion about this, Bill. You’re the only son of a bitch I trust in this waterlogged city…”

The tape recorder played a guitar strumming a mocking little tune, someone whistling along in the background. A gentle drumbeat led the way to singing that Bill recognized as Anna Culpepper’s voice.

“Ryan drew us in, Ryan locked us inAnd Sander Cohen kept us hypnotized—Andrew kept us thin, all for a whim,And Sander Cohen kept us mesmerized—With silly songs and watered drinksAnd dance-dance-dancingWith silly blonds and makeup winksAll flounce-flounce-flouncing…”