BioShock Rapture

She opened the labelless bottle, took a mouthful, swished it around, then spat it out onto her lab coat. She got her keys from the hook on the wall and then went out into the hallway. A security camera swiveled toward her and sent a bot from its cabinet to look at her. It registered her DNA-detection flasher, circled her once, and then whirred back to its container. She kept on down the hallway, made a stop in lab 16, then came back out into the corridor—and stopped dead. Two sentries were scowling at her, blocking the way with shotguns in their hands.

The tall, sallow-faced guard in the overalls was Rolf. She didn’t know the squat one with the bad teeth. He had a constable badge pinned upside down on an old military coat.

“What you doing wandering ’round; this ain’t your work time, lady,” Rolf asked, squinting at her suspiciously.

Brigid blinked at them, swaying in what she hoped was a good simulation of drunkenness. “Could not sleep. Lonely. Thinking maybe I will make myself pretty to visit you. Maybe I will take a shower, yes? Maybe you join me in shower, eh?”

Rolf’s mouth dropped open—nothing had ever surprised him more. But she could see he wanted to believe it.

The short one scratched his matted hair. “Well now … you mean … just Rolf here?”

“Oh no, plenty room for everyone; we take turns, yes?” Pretending to swig the vodka, she turned to point at the showers, at the far end of the hall.

She turned back and grinned at them with bleary inebriation. “You take bottle and wait there, eh? I will make myself pretty…”

“Oh no, too many cameras…” Rolf began. “If someone checks…”

“I will turn them off!” Brigid insisted, waving the problem away. “It is nothing!”

“What’s a-going on down here?” called a redheaded man, with a tommy gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. He came stalking down the hall, lower lip thrust out disapprovingly. But his expression changed, became sheer lust, when he saw the bottle in her hand. Not lust for her …

“Is that … wine?”

Brigid shook her head at him. “No. Much stronger. You want?” She thrust the bottle into his grasp. “You take the vodka to shower; I will take care of cameras. You can share with these boys, yes? We have a small party.” She wagged a finger at them. “But you must not be naughty boys in shower!” She turned away, laughing, and staggered away in the direction of the autosecurity control panels …

She heard them walking off, muttering, toward the showers. Rolf saying, “I dunno … maybe just a drink or two, but there’s no way we…”

She used the combination lock, switched off the security cameras and bots, and then went to check the showers. It was already done. The overwhelming dose of sleeping powder she’d put in the vodka had done its work, and quickly. All three sentries were sprawled snoring on the floor. She unloaded two of the shotguns, taking the shells, and then carried the third shotgun away with her.

She got the leather tote bag she needed, with the equipment for removing the sea slugs and some canned food. She stuffed it all in the bag. The purging device would cause the sea slugs to disintegrate inside the children. They would vomit up the remains.

Brigid hurried down the dimly lit hall to the row of children’s cells. She leaned the shotgun against the wall before she let the girls out, not wanting to scare them. She put a finger to her lips, to signify quiet, as she let each one out, and winked.

“Now children,” she whispered, as they gathered around her, a diminutive crowd, “we will play a game of quiet—like hide-and-seek. We will get the other girls and then…”

“Someone’s coming,” said one of the moppets.

Brigid heard the heavy footsteps then. Probably the fourth sentry, who stood out in the hallway. “Hey, the system’s down!” he called, from around the corner of the corridor.

“Children, we will go back into this nursery, together, all of us, and we’ll wait till he goes by—we will trick him!”

The children giggled mischievously, and she hushed them, herding them into the nursery cell. One of them lay on the cot, pretending to be asleep; the others pressed into a corner near the door, squatting in excited silence with Brigid. A few moments more, and then they heard the guard striding by.

“Rolf!” the man called. “Where the hell you got to? The system’s down! Christ, if the splicers’ve got in…”

Brigid and the Little Sisters waited another long, slow minute. She guessed it’d be two or three minutes before the fourth sentry found the others sleeping in the showers. There was no time to get any more children out—they were far down the hallway. She’d lose the ones she had if she tried …

Heart pounding, Brigid stood up, and whispered, “We must go like ghosts! Quiet as ghosts!”

“The ghosts aren’t so quiet,” a black-haired Little Sister remarked, twirling the ends of her hair around a finger. “I hear them talking all the time!”

“Then be quieter than ghosts! Come on!”