BioShock Rapture

Dear Andrei:Andrei Rianofski, Andrew Ryan, Mr. Ryan; the lover, the Tycoon, the Tyrant: just three of the many sides of you. I saw only the cold side recently—first you didn’t show up for New Year’s Eve, and I had to face rogue splicers without you. Then you didn’t show up when I was recovering from the surgery. You stood me up again in Fort Frolic. You had “a meeting”! So I decided to go home. Tried to go the short route. Apollo Square was blocked off, taken over by the rebels. But I was a bit drunk, and angry, and I wanted to confront them for the damage they’d done me. Maybe I wanted them to kill me and just get it over with. A woman tried to escape—to get past Ryan’s guards keeping the rebels in Apollo Square, and one of your pet splicers pointed his finger at her and she burst into flames! I had heard about Atlas. But it occurred to me I only had your side of it. So I thought they were either going to kill me—or explain themselves to me. And I bribed a guard at the gate into letting me through.Conditions are terrible in Apollo Square, and Artemis. The crowding, the squalor. They say it was almost as bad before the revolution. They say it was your doing—your neglect! Graffiti is painted on the walls: “Atlas Lives!” What do I really know about Atlas? And at last someone took me to meet him. They know I’m your mistress, or was, but they have learned to trust me. Atlas was surprisingly humble. I asked him if he would lead the people in some kind of uprising against you. He said, “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. These people will liberate themselves.” Isn’t that strange—it’s almost like something you would say! But when he said it—I understood. It meant something. It went right to the heart of me, Andrei! I thought you were a great man. I was wrong. Atlas is a great man. And I will serve him; I will struggle beside him, fighting all you represent! I’m going on a raid tomorrow to get weapons and food. I will learn to fight, Andrei. You abandoned me—now I have left you. I have left you for Atlas—and the revolution!Diane

Ryan folded the paper up and tore it into small bits. He let the shreds of paper flutter to the floor, picked up his martini—and suddenly lost control of himself, throwing the glass so that it smashed on the big picture window, fragments of wet, broken glass sliding down over the glowing spires of the city …

20

Drafting Room, Atlantic Express Depot

1959

“There was meant to be a maintenance team here instead of me,” Bill groused as he bent to examine the cracks in the curved metal wall of the maintenance runoff tunnel. “They had some git of a splicer, was going to creep up the walls and fix the leaks they couldn’t reach. Don’t know what became of the buggers…”

Karlosky grunted. “I think I see your maintenance team.”