BioShock Rapture

But Sofia Lamb—he had a plan for her. He’d get her to debate him in public. When Rapture’s better element heard her Marxist sophistry flagrantly blared on the radio, no one would object if she simply … disappeared.

“I was thinking,” Diane said, “that we might have some public performances, me and Sander and a few of them others—” She remembered her new grammar. Cleared her throat. “And a few others, in the park and in the atriums, get people out more. You’ve made all these large, lovely, high-ceilinged spaces for people—but what do they do? They huddle like little gophers in their warrens!”

Ryan found himself yearning for the simpler, less affected company of Jasmine Jolene. Perhaps he could slip away to see her tonight …

“Mr. Ryan?” Karlosky’s thick accent broke in on his thoughts. Smelling of tobacco and too much men’s cologne, Karlosky was standing at his elbow.

Ryan turned briskly to him, hoping this was an excuse to slip away early. “Yes?”

“There is problem in Hephaestus. Sabotage, they say!”

“Sabotage!” Strange that he should be almost pleased to hear of this. But it was just the excuse he needed. He stood. “Do not discommode yourselves,” he told the others. “I’d better go look into this.”

“I’ll come too,” Kinkaide said.

“Not your area of engineering, Anton. I’ll see to it. Ah—perhaps you can escort Diane home for me, after?”

“Oh yes, yes, delighted, surely, I … yes…”

Ryan hurried away with Karlosky, guessing that Bill McDonagh was already dealing with the emergency …

*   *   *

Bill McDonagh was up to his waist in icy water, wondering how he was going to deal with this emergency. He had sloshed across the valve-control room and found the right wheels to turn, but his numb fingers were losing strength. He only had two out of four shut down. He managed the third and fumbled at the fourth. He should have closed the hatch to the valve room. But if he did, he risked drowning in here. He’d switched on the bailing pumps and hoped the machine could keep up with the inflow till he could get this broken pipe plugged.

Roland Wallace was also wading in through the water, wearing rubber waders up to his armpits and gloves. Wallace pressed close at Bill’s side, reached into the cold water, and helped turn the last two valves. The valve wheels turned gratingly, and it seemed to take forever—but at last the flow was blocked.

The water stopped rushing into the room, and they found their way to the pumps, activated them, waiting for the room to drain—both with chattering teeth.

“You see the tool marks where they tore the pipes out?” Wallace asked, pointing. His voice was raised to be heard over the grinding and sucking sounds of the pumps.

Bill nodded, rubbing the feeling back into his hands. The broken coolant pipe was jutting out, the metal ragged at the ends, the harsh angle and the marks on the wall suggesting strong force. “You got no argument from me, mate. Sabotage!”

The floodwater had almost pumped out when Bill saw the package taped to the ceiling vent.

“What the hell is that, Roland!”

“What—oh! I don’t know! But it’s got some kind of clock on it…”

“Jay-sus! It’s a bomb! Get out!”

Wallace threw the bolt, opened the metal door—and they stepped through not a split second before a whoomf sound came from behind them, with a flash and a sharp smell of gunpowder.

“Fuck!” Bill sputtered. He peered through the smoky air, back through the open door, and saw a blackened mark on the vent where the bomb had gone off but no other appreciable damage. Instead, the room was littered with what looked like large pieces of confetti, which were starting to stick to the wet floor and walls.

Coughing from the acrid smoke, he stepped in, scooped up some of the confetti, and hurried back out.

There were words on the strips of paper. Printed in large black letters on one was

RAPTURE OPPRESSORS

And on another was

BE WARNED

They were all like that, one phrase or the other. “Be warned, Rapture oppressors,” he said, looking over the slips of paper.

“A bomb with nothing but paper in it?” Wallace said, puzzled, scratching his head.

Bill remembered hearing as a kid about the old anarchist bombers active from the late nineteenth century. Mad bombers they’d called them. But confetti wasn’t their style. “Just a way to get our attention,” he suggested. “A little sabotage, yeah? A bit of a bomb, but not enough to make people go all out to find the bombers. Like it says—a warning, innit?”

“But the implication is that a bigger bomb will come,” Wallace pointed out. “Otherwise, why a bomb at all?”

“God’s truth, that. Think they’re oppressed, do they? That supposed to tell us what they want? Bloody vague, I call it.”

“What’s vague?” Ryan asked, hurrying in. “What’s happened?”

“Here, Mr. Ryan—you oughtn’t to be here!” Bill said. “There could be another bomb!”

“A bomb!”

Wallace shrugged. “More like a firecracker, sir. Spreading confetti—with some kind of political warning on it. Not much damage.”