BioShock Rapture

A sickening smell rose up from the shaft. “Must be something dead down there,” Bill said. He climbed down as the electrician held the light. It got a little colder each step he descended. The other two joined him at the bottom, and they ducked to enter a tunnel, the electrician going first to light the way. The reek of death was growing stronger. They had to move along hunched over—the tunnel was about eight inches too low to stand up in. “If they’re going to make it big enough for a short man, why can’t they make it big enough for a tall man,” the electrician grumbled. “It ain’t that much more.”

Just thirty echoing steps in, where the tunnel narrowed to a large pipe, they found the source of the smell—and the cause of the obstruction. A body was jammed in the heating duct. It appeared to be the partly mummified body of a boy—perhaps twelve or thirteen—lying facedown in the vent pipe. He wore ragged clothing, and his black hair was matted with old dried blood. A large fan blade, pitted with rust, had sliced partway through his neck …

“Oh Jesus fookin’ Christ,” Bill muttered. “Poor little blighter.”

Wallace was gagging. It took him a few moments to get his composure. Bill had seen enough death in the war—and in the building of Rapture—and he was almost inured to it. Almost. Still, he felt a deep queasiness looking at the shriveled hands of the child, clutching at the tunnel wall—as if frozen in a last attempt at reaching out to life.

“I reckon,” Bill said, his voice a bit hoarse, “the kid was exploring … and the fan’s not on all the time. It was off, and he tried to crawl past—and that’s when it came on.”

The electrician nodded. “Yeah. But he wasn’t exploring. Didn’t have any place to live. One of the orphans. Nobody took him in, so … he came down into the tunnels to sleep, where he’d be safe. Maybe got lost.”

“The orphans?” Bill asked. “Quite a few, are there?”

“There’s some, hereabout. People come here, work, then they finish a project and the bosses lay ’em off. No more work. But they’re not allowed to leave Rapture either. So they start to fighting over food and such—kill one another. And now with these plasmids … some people don’t know how to handle ’em. Got to know how. Surely do. If you don’t—you might get a little carried away. Leaves some orphans…”

“There ought to be an orphanage,” Wallace said.

The electrician chuckled grimly. “Think Ryan can figure out how to run one for profit?”

“Someone’ll start one, we get enough orphans,” Bill said. “Well, let’s move him and see if we can get this thing started…”

Glad to leave the impromptu metal tomb, Wallace volunteered to get the necessary items. He hurried back to the ladder, returning a few minutes later with a large burlap sack and extra gloves. “Kid’s kinda shriveled; I suppose we can get him in this…”

Grimacing, they worked the child’s body free of the jam, carefully blocking the blades with a hammer from the toolbox in case they should decide to start running.

But after they’d gotten the dried-out husk of a child removed and stuffed the desiccated body into the burlap sack and removed the hammer, the vent blades were still motionless.

The electrician opened a panel near the fan and made some adjustments inside with a tool. He squirted lubricant in and used a small device to test for current. “It’s live over there but … I’m going to have to give it a jolt to get it going. Some parts sat too long—rusted inside. Stand back…”

He stretched his left hand out toward the panel—seemed to concentrate for a moment—his eyes glowed faintly—and a small lightning bolt shot blue-white from his hand and crackled into the open panel.

Startled, Bill straightened suddenly—and banged his head on the ceiling. “Bloody buggerin’ hell!”

“Electro Bolt plasmid,” Wallace muttered.

“Holy…” Bill said, rubbing his head. “They just fookin’…” Then he realized that the fan was whirring, blowing warm air into his face.

“That’ll do it,” the electrician said. “When this one stopped, the other ones stopped too. Should all be working now…”

He turned and glared at Bill—and there was still a bit of glow in his eyes, so that he looked like a feral animal in the tunnel dimness.

“You just got to know how to handle ’em, see?” he said. “The plasmids.” Then he picked up his tools and started back to the ladder.

11

Maintenance Station 17, Sinclair Deluxe Hotel and Apartments

1955

“You don’t mean you spent it all, Rupert?” demanded Rupert Mudge’s wife—just as he’d figured she would—with that disgusted look on her face that he was getting so very sick of seeing.

She was a hip-heavy, short-legged bottle blonde with permanent frown lines in the corners of her mouth that made her face look like a wooden puppet. She wore a tattered red-and-yellow flower-print dress and the work boots she used in her housecleaning job.