BioShock Rapture

Sullivan pocketed his own pistol, grabbed the dead man by the collar, and dragged him to the lower ramp, laboring in his water-heavy clothing. Pulling the thug onto the ramp, he bent over—aware of the pain from a deep bruise in his left shoulder—and turned the corpse over. There was just enough light to make out the face. He still didn’t recognize him. Or did he? He reached out and wiped wet hair away from the dead man’s face. He’d seen that face in a photo, in the Rapture admissions records. A maintenance worker. “The guy tried to brain me with a wrench,” he said as Ivan Karlosky joined him.

“I heard you shoot,” Karlosky said. “But you miss.”

“Didn’t have time to aim. You see anybody else on the other side of the wharf?”

“Da! Running away! Could not see who!”

“I’ve seen this one’s file. Don’t remember his name.”

“Mickael Lasko. Ukrainian! All sons of bitches, Ukrainians! Lasko, he work maintenance, then do something for Peach Wilkins. I heard in a bar, maybe he knows about smuggling—so I follow him this morning. The bastard lose me down in the docking maze. Some hidden passages down there…”

“Seemed like this particular Ukrainian son of a bitch wanting to do me in…” Shivering with the chill from the water soaking his clothing, Sullivan went through the dead man’s coat pockets—and came up with an envelope full of Rapture dollars and, in another pocket, a small notebook. He opened the notebook. It contained a list, blurred from the water. He read it aloud:

“Bibles—7 soldCocaine 2 g soldLiquor 6 fifthsLetters out, 3 at 70 RD each.”

“Looks like he’s smuggling,” Karlosky said.

Sullivan shook his head. “Looks like Fontaine or Wilkins don’t have much respect for me. Like I’m supposed to believe this guy is behind it all. He’s not going to keep a notebook listing cocaine and Bibles. I doubt he knew how to spell ’em. The envelope with the cash in it was payment to this knucklehead to try to take me down. They were okay with it if he got killed. Make it look like the smuggler was all done for, take the heat off them…”

He tossed Karlosky the envelope. “You can have that—for saving my life. Come on, I’ll send someone down to pick up this patsy.” They started back up the ramp, hurrying into better lighting. “Shit, I hate walking with salt water in my pants. It’s rasping my ball sack, goddammit … let’s get a drink. I’ll buy you a vodka.”

“Vodka is good to get smell of rotting fish out! And smell of dead Ukrainian—even worse!”

A Locked Laboratory, Rapture

1953

“Absurd, Tenenbaum!” Dr. Suchong jeered as he walked ahead of Frank Fontaine and Brigid Tenenbaum.

“This discovery is very great,” Tenenbaum retorted confidently. She seemed to simmer with subdued excitement. “Mr. Fontaine, you will see!”

Frank Fontaine’s deal with Dr. Suchong and Brigid Tenenbaum hadn’t quite paid off yet. Maybe, he figured, as he followed her and Suchong into the laboratory, today was the day that particular roll of the dice was going to come up lucky sevens. Tenenbaum’s excitement—which she almost never showed—seemed to hint she’d stumbled across something explosive.

Tenenbaum led the way to a sedated man in a hospital gown lying on a padded gurney in the most secretive inner chamber of the laboratory complex. She looked the unconscious man over with analytical coolness as she spoke. “Germans, all they can talk about is blue eyes and shape of forehead. All I care about is why is this one born strong, and that one weak—this one smart, that one stupid? All the killing, you think the Germans could have been interested in something useful? Today—I think we have found something very much useful…”

The sleeping man on the gurney was bound to it with leather restraints. He was quite an ordinary-looking man of medium height, brown hair, blotchy skin. Fontaine had seen him playing poker in Fighting McDonagh’s—Willy Brougham. On the white metal table beside Brougham was an enormous syringe with a thick red liquid in it. Occupying most of a shelf beyond the table was a five-gallon aquarium tank bubbling with seawater. Immersed in the tank, pulsing repugnantly on a bed of sand, was one of Tenenbaum’s sluglike wonders. It was about eight inches long, with a primitive armor fringing its edges. It had striated, grainy skin; faintly incandescent blue panels on its humped back. Teeth gnashed at one end on its elongated body; a small tapered tail twitched at the other.

“This Tenenbaum, she believes genes answer to everything. Suchong think genes important—but the control of subject’s mind, conditioning of synapses, these things are more important! Who controls such, controls all!”

“I like that,” Fontaine said. “Conditioning is something real interesting to me. Read about it in some magazine. The Nazis were experimenting with it…”