BioShock Rapture

Fort Frolic, Rapture

1959

“My daddy’s smarter than Einstein, stronger than Hercules, and lights a fire with a snap of his finger! Are you as good as my daddy, Mister? Not if you don’t visit the Gatherer’s Garden, you aren’t! Smart daddies get spliced at the garden!”

The automated voice at the Gatherer’s Garden machine, near the entrance to the strip joint where Jasmine worked, seemed to be speaking directly to Andrew Ryan, as if teasing him, mocking him. He ignored it, as well as the startled man taking tickets at the door. He rushed into the strip club, disregarding the swaying woman on the stage.

He beelined right to that backstage door he’d been so familiar with before he’d gotten Jasmine into her luxury apartment …

He should have taken her in hand, forced it out of her—not gotten so caught up in other things.

But too late. He kept hearing the tape over and over in his head. “That creepy Tenenbaum promised me it wasn’t gonna be a real pregnancy; they’d just take the egg out once Mr. Ryan and I had … I needed the money so bad. But I know Mr. Ryan’s gonna suss it out … gonna know I wasn’t being careful … gonna know I sold the…”

Sold his child!

He slammed into the back hallway, down the hall, into the bedroom where strippers did their “extra” shows for special customers, and there she was, barely dressed, yawning on the wrinkled bedclothes. Jasmine Jolene, looking sleepy. Pretending all was right with them when she saw him come in. Pretending that she was glad to see him.

“I … I thought you’d forgotten about me…” she squeaked. Forgetting her elocution lessons in her fear. “But I’m so glad you didn’t.”

“You sold my child! To Tenenbaum! To Fontaine!”

She scrambled away from him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know. I didn’t know Fontaine had something to do with it! I…”

He couldn’t bear to hear the lies coming out of that pretty mouth. He lunged at her, closed his hands over her soft neck.

“What are you doing?” she gasped. “No, no don’t! Please! I loved you—don’t, please, don’t! No, no!”

She tried to say something else, but it was cut off, squeezed off by the inexorable pressure of his fingers tightening on her throat. Tighter, squeezing ever tighter, until her pretty eyes fairly popped out of her head …

Farmer’s Market

1959

A security bot whirred by overhead, making that irritating whistling noise. Ryan and Bill, walking with their escort, glanced up at the bot as it whizzed by, Bill ducking.

He looked over at Elaine and Sophie, browsing together on the other side of the open-stall market. The pale, frightened little man standing behind the hydroponic vegetables rack gave them a hesitant smile. Bill glanced up at another sound—the big security camera above a fruit booth, whirring in its red pool of light to take him in. He wore his ID flasher, so it decided not to tell one of the turrets or bots to kill him.

This was no place to raise a child. Especially when they might come across a dead body at any moment. But Ryan insisted that life go on with as much normality as possible, and he’d pressured Bill to bring his family out on this walk today.

“Come along, Bill…” Ryan had said.

Bill had said, “Right, guv’nor, I’ll get the Mrs. and the squeaker…” But it had taken a lot of talking to get Elaine out of the house with Sophie.

They had Redgrave and Karlosky in front of them, Linosky and Cavendish, each one of them with a machine gun in his hands. Andrew Ryan was the only one without a gun. Ryan carried that fancy walking stick now, what with him getting a bit long in the tooth. He still looked natty and confident—a bit grim, but not too worried.

A lot of men had died in the past few days. Skirmishes were popping up all over Rapture. It was a guerilla war—but it was war.

Bill had nearly left Ryan Industries after the takeover of Fontaine Futuristics—it had been a blow, Ryan nationalizing an industry. A putrid hypocrisy. And before that—Persephone. Then Sullivan telling him what Ryan had been up to, behind the scenes. Torture—and having Anna Culpepper killed. But the final, camel-busting straw was the disappearance of Mascha. He’d asked Ryan about it, and Cavendish. Ryan had said he could not be bothered with every petty crime around Rapture—and Cavendish had said, “You deal with the plumbing; we’ll deal with security—now fuck off.” And that was it—he’d decided right then, walking away from Cavendish’s office, he was getting his family out of Rapture. It was just a question of choosing his moment.