BioShock Rapture

“Maybe someday.” She twined her fingers with his, looking nervously around. “Best not to speak of such, here. We have food and shelter now…”

Sam snorted. He looked at the other people shuffling back and forth in the close, malodorous suite. And all the other rooms and suites in the Artemis building were just as crowded, just as prone to tension.

Little Toby Griggs appeared to be arguing with big, chunky Babcock again. Something odd about those two. It was as if in a moment they’d transform into two cats arching their backs and hissing. Then Babcock turned and walked away between the bunk beds. Griggs followed …

There were two rows of bunk beds in what should have been the living room. Seven more against the two long walls in the bedroom. Junk piled in the corner. Not enough storage. He hoped the toilet wasn’t plugged up again. Smelled like it might be.

And someone had been putting graffiti on the walls. Ryan doesn’t own us! it said. Become the body of the Lamb! That would have to come down before the constables saw it.

“Oh, if you were up in the lighthouse,” Mariska said suddenly, “you saw the sky! That must have been nice!” Her eyes were wide at the thought of seeing the sky again.

“Yes. I only had a few seconds to look at it. They had us busy fixing the entry bathysphere. We had to bowse up three hundred yards of steel spool and set it in place. Not easy with just three of us and only a hand-cranked winch. And it was cold up in that lighthouse shaft. It’s winter on the surface. I remember crossing this ocean in a troopship this time of year—cold as hell and the waves higher than the ship, all of us seasick.” He made a mental effort to force memories of the war out of his mind. It was helped by Toby Griggs and Babcock arguing loudly on the other side of the bunks. He tried to ignore them—you had to screen most people out, in these conditions, if you wanted to stay sane.

“Did you hear anything up there in the lighthouse?” she asked. “I mean—maybe ships passing or gulls or…”

“You know what I heard up there? Icebergs! We heard one of them banging on the lighthouse—boom! Big ol’ clangin’, echoing sound! What a noise!”

“I’d like to go up and look sometime,” she said wistfully. “If they allowed it…”

“Oh Jesus. I’m sorry I brought you down here. They made it sound so good…”

She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips seemed deliciously soft to him, after dealing with cold, hard metal all day. “Miluji tě!” she whispered. Czech for “I love you.”

“Me too, kid!” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. She was a small woman, nestling easily against him.

Around the crowded bunk room, people muttered and argued and bitched in three, maybe four different languages: the singsong of Chinese, the bubbling flow of Spanish, and especially the sarcastic brassiness of Brooklyn English.

“Whadya doin’ with ya boots under my bunk over heah? I look like I got room for your shit under my bunk fa cryin’ out loud?”

“Someone fucking stole the last of my scented fucking soap! You know how hard it is to get that shit? It’s probably you, Morry…”

“The fuck it was!”

“Somebody got into my lockbox! I had my last EVE hypo in there and it’s gone!”

“Whatya talkin’ about, you’re the one stole my plasmids! I had a New Skills I was gonna inject for the job tomorrow!”

Frightened by the shouting, Mascha came to sit with her back against her dad’s legs. She made the little dolls clack together, singing loudly to drown out the sound of all those heated voices. “La, la-la la, the rapture of Rapture, your heart it will capture, oh la, la-la la-a-a!”

Someone in the far corner shouted, but Sam couldn’t make out what they said. He caught a flash, heard a crackle, smelled ozone—a shout of pain and a flare of blue light.

A ball of fire sizzled across the room, between the bunks, and charred the wall on the left.

“Mama! Daddy!” Mascha whimpered, climbing up on the bed behind them to peek over her mother’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Someone’s messing with those plasmids!” Mariska whispered, her voice choked with fear. “They’re way over there, little one, on the other side of the room—we’ll be safe here.”

“Stay at the bunk,” Sam told her firmly. Mariska tried to hold him back, but he pulled away. He had to know what was going on. If they were throwing fireballs, the whole place could catch—plenty of flammables in Artemis. They were a ways from the doors to the suite and could surely burn alive before they got out. A mighty peculiar way to die considering they were deep underwater. But he’d heard of men burning alive in submarines in the war.

He moved carefully to steal a look around the corner of the Ming family’s double bunk and saw the two men quarrelling in the far corner of the room near the row of circular blue-lit ports looking out into the sea.