BioShock Rapture

The walking stick came whistling down—and Bill caught it, wincing at the impact as he grabbed it with his left hand. They struggled a moment, Ryan panting, his teeth bared—and then Bill acted instinctively. He struck down with the butt of the pistol like a club, cracking Andrew Ryan on the forehead.

Ryan grunted and fell backward. He lay gasping on the floor, eyes half-closed. Bill found that he had the walking stick in his own hand. He dropped it beside Ryan, then knelt and took Ryan’s pulse. Ryan was stunned, unconscious, but his pulse was strong. Bill knew, somehow, that Ryan would survive intact.

Bill squeezed Ryan’s hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ryan. I didn’t know what else to do. I can’t kill you. Best of luck, guv…”

He stood, pistol in hand, and started for the door, walking mechanically, feeling all lumbering and heavy like a Big Daddy. He stuck the pistol in his pocket and found his way out past the double line of dead men on stakes, out past the swiveling camera.

He stepped into the hallway, trying not to look like he was in a hurry. He and Elaine and Sophie would have to take a circuitous route. It was a long trek yet to get where they were going. He didn’t have much time. Karlosky would find Ryan, and there would be an alert … security bots, Ryan’s thugs …

He had to hurry or lose everything. They were waiting for him in the cemetery, a separate little park off Arcadia …

Cemetery near Arcadia

1959

Burials at sea were cheap. But some preferred Rapture’s charming little cemetery.

Bill had liked visiting the place, and it was usually deserted, so he’d arranged to meet Elaine and Sophie here. Old-fashioned, rustic in style, the cemetery near Arcadia reminded him of the churchyard where his grandfather was buried.

But when he stepped through the archway, he found it had lost its charm.

Five paces away, a naked man, painted blue, was hunched threateningly over Elaine and Sophie, who were cowered in front of a tombstone. The man was a Saturnine, one of the “pagan” cults who’d sprung up in the vacuum of religion in Rapture, sneaking about starkers to paint their cryptic graffiti, getting high on ADAM and coloring themselves blue. “Harness the flame, harness the mist!” the man chanted in a grating voice. The blue-painted savage gripped a large kitchen knife in his right hand. Its blade was brown with dried blood.

The man’s bare foot was pressing Elaine’s purse to the ground, as if crushing a small animal.

“I will give you to the flame,” the Saturnine muttered. “I offer you to the mist!”

The Saturnine raised his knife high, to slash down at Elaine—

“Here’s some flame, you bastard; harness this!” Bill shouted, to make him turn his way.

The Saturnine whirled to confront Bill, his face a caricature of ADAM-warped savagery, teeth bared, red foam coming from his nostrils. He threw the knife as Bill dodged to the left—the knife slashed at his right shoulder, just a razor-thin cut, and Bill shot the pagan point-blank in the chest.

The Saturnine swayed, went to his knees, and flopped facedown.

Sophie was sobbing, her hands covering her eyes. Elaine jerked her purse from under the dead man’s foot, pulled out the pistol, slung the purse over her shoulder, and, with a look of steely determination in her eyes that Bill admired, pulled Sophie to her feet. “Come on, baby,” Elaine told her. “We’re getting the hell out of this place.”

“I’m scared, Mama,” Sophie said.

“I know the feeling, love,” Bill said, giving the child a quick hug. “But you’ll like the surface world. Don’t believe what you’ve heard about it. Come on!”

*   *   *

They were surprisingly close. Bill, Elaine, and Sophie were hurrying up to the open bathysphere that would take them up the shaft of the lighthouse, to where Wallace should be waiting.

A rogue splicer slid down the cable, jumping off the bathysphere’s top and tumbling through the air like an acrobat. He landed on his feet in front of Bill. The splicer wore a small harlequin-style New Year’s Eve mask, splashed with the blood of the body he’d taken it from; he had long, dirty brown hair, a streaked red-brown beard, and glittering blue eyes. His yellow teeth were bared in a rictuslike grin. “Hee, that’s me, and ooh, that’s you!” he cackled. Leaping from right to left, back again, blur-fast, an elusive target. “Look at the little girly-girl! I can sell her to Ryan or keep her for play and maybe a quick bite!” He had a razor-sharp curved fish-gutting blade in each hand …

Sophie whimpered in fear and ducked behind her mother—Elaine and Bill fired their pistols at the splicer almost simultaneously … and they both missed. He’d leapt in the air, flipping over them and coming down behind: SportBoost, and lots of it.

The rogue splicer was spinning to slash at them—but Bill was turning at the same time, firing. The bullet cracked into one of the curved blades, knocking it away. The splicer slashed out with the other blade, which cut the air an inch from Sophie’s nose.