BioShock Rapture

They were in lab 3 of Fontaine Futuristics—an almost bare room but for a cabinet, a brushed-steel table of instruments, and an examination bed fitted with restraints. Steel walls were textured with rust and rivets; the room smelled of antiseptics and seawater leakage. He heard it dripping between the walls. A single naked electric lightbulb glowed in the middle of the ceiling. The floor was covered with what looked to Fontaine like a thin carpet of black rubber.

“You guys don’t go in for extras, do you,” Fontaine observed. “Maybe a little decoration…”

“We will add more equipment later,” Dr. Suchong said, bending over the table. “Decorations are superfluous.” He selected a syringe and set about drawing a glowing blue fluid from a beaker. The man on the table looked at the syringe with frightened eyes; he writhed and made a mewing sound.

“In time, Suchong will add computers, such other devices.”

“Computers?” Fontaine asked. “What’s a computer?”

“Like … adding machine,” Suchong said, putting alcohol on Brougham’s shoulder. “But faster, smarter. Mr. Ryan has designs. We can take to Fontaine Futuristics … Now—injecting the solution we call EVE. It will activate the ADAM we have already incorporated into him…”

He injected Brougham’s shoulder with EVE. The man strapped to the table groaned and tried to pull away. Suchong relentlessly drove the syringe plunger home.

“We are ready,” Suchong said. “Please back away from subject…”

All three of them backed away from the man on the exam table, all the way to the door. “The subject” was muttering to himself. Visibly quivering in the leather restraints. Shuddering. Shaking. Till shaking became convulsing. He shrieked, and his back arched, bones audibly creaking. Fontaine was afraid the guy was going to snap his own spine.

“It’s coming out of me it’s coming out of me it’s coming out of meeeeee!” Brougham shrieked.

Then there was a sizzling sound—the smell of ozone and burning flesh—and blue electricity arced up, passing from the man’s restrained hands to his head, the arc crackling for a moment—and then it snapped up at the electric light—which burst and went out.

The room went dark. Black as the pit of hell.

“What the devil—!” Fontaine said.

As if the devil in question were responding to Fontaine, a reddish-blue glow surged up again, much brighter now, illuminating the room. The exam room strobed in and out of visibility, Brougham’s hands hissing great fat sparks that blackened the walls. The only light source was the eerie glow generated by the man on the table. A hissing sound filled the room. The glow in the man’s eyes began to pulse.

Fontaine shook his head, not at all certain of what he had gotten himself into. He realized he should have brought Reggie, maybe Lance too.

“Doctor!” Tenenbaum shouted. “The tranquilizer!”

Fontaine saw for the first time that Suchong had something ready in his hand—it looked like a gun, but when he fired it at the man on the exam table it made a soft spitting sound, and there was no muzzle flash. The man yelped, and Fontaine saw that a dart of some kind had shot into the man’s hip, where it waggled with his movements.

Those movements calmed … and the light diminished as the electrical glow ebbed away.

“You see,” Suchong said, “when mind shuts down, his power too shut down…”

“We should have insulated that lightbulb,” Tenenbaum said, reaching back to open the door, as the last of the electrical shine vanished.

The light from the hall indirectly illuminated the chamber, and the three of them approached Brougham, who once more seemed semiconscious, moving his head gently from side to side.

The experimental subject seemed relatively unhurt, to Fontaine’s surprise, though the man’s hospital gown was reduced to charred threads. “He should have gotten burned, shouldn’t he, with all that electricity shooting around in him? Maybe he’s all burned inside himself?”

Tenenbaum shook her head as she examined the experimental subject, taking his pulse. “No. He is not burned. This is part of plasmid phenomenon. He emanates the electricity but is not harmed by it. Not exactly … harmed.”

“So—what’s the practical use of this stuff?” Fontaine demanded. “How’re we going to make money on it?”

Tenenbaum shrugged. “Can be used to start engines, galvanize equipment that is missing power, yes?”

Looking closer, Fontaine saw there was a mark on Brougham—around his eyes. Not exactly scar tissue, but more like a thickening of the skin—a cancerlike growth across his face. Radiating outward from his eyes was a fanciful mask of thickened red tissue.

“You notice the extraneous tissue,” Dr. Suchong said, nodding. “Does not seem … lethal. But it is curious. Some subjects have more than others…”

“Some of them? How many of these guys do you have?”

“A few still alive. Come—this way.” He led the way from the chamber.