BioShock Rapture

“As far as her followers know, she’s simply disappeared. Deserted them!”

Bill shook his head sadly. “Ought to be another way, Mr. Ryan…”

“I cannot allow this social sabotage to go on!” Ryan aimed an index finger at Bill. “Do you know who planted that charming little confetti bomb, with its warnings? Oh, I found out, Bill.” He slapped the top of his desk. “It was done by an agent of Sofia Lamb! Stanley Poole’s infiltrated her little circle. He’s heard that it was one of our own people who planted the thing … quite likely, Simon Wales!”

“Wales!”

“Oh yes! At Lamb’s behest.”

“Well—why not prosecute her for that? A bomb’s a bomb. It was vandalism at least! But this just disappearing people…”

“Her public prosecution would become a cause célèbre! Anyway, we haven’t got solid proof. Just hearsay. But think about it—how like a psychiatrist to create a bomb that blows nothing up … except our sense of security! Not long after she got here, she started her little game, pulling the pins out from under us one by one. Do you know what she did with the bonus money I paid her? She took that—and a great many ‘donations’ from her followers—and built that smarmy Dionysus Park. Named in some bizarre effort at mockery…”

“Dionysus Park?” Bill scratched his head. He’d only been there once, to check the drainage. “Thought it was some kind of ‘retreat.’ Therapeutic art, something like that.”

“Oh yes.” Ryan’s voice dripped with cynicism as he went on. “A retreat—her sheeplike followers closeted with Sofia Lamb in her precious garden and her own cinema. Just the setting for Marxist propaganda disguised as therapy and art! Rapture is a powder keg, Bill—I knew that when Ruben Greavy died. Plasmids made Rapture unstable. We can’t remove plasmids, not now—but we can remove some of the instability. Lamb, people like her—they have to be stopped.”

Bill wondered exactly what happened to the “incarcerated” in Persephone. Wasn’t Persephone a name from a myth—about hell?

Ryan went on, gesturing at the Acu-Vox, “I recorded a note to you about all this—but I may as well talk it straight out with you instead. You remember when you spoke of a ‘marketplace of ideas’? That was you. I liked the phrase. So—I let Lamb enter the marketplace, tried to defang her in debates. But she is too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely … You know the place they’re calling Pauper’s Drop—you’ve been to the Limbo Room?”

“Not me. Too much a ’ole in the wall.”

“Good. Because Grace Holloway was singing protest songs there—perfectly harmless colored lady was Grace, till Lamb got hold of her! And between their protest screeches, these … these Oblomovs hand out Lamb’s manifesto! Lamb adorns every wall there! Saint Lamb! You made her, McDonagh—”

“Me!”

“You with your marketplace-of-ideas talk! You persuaded me to allow her sort! Now—I want you to talk to the council about this. They must accept that people like this are to be silenced…”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Ryan, it’s not my place…”

“I need to know how you really feel, Bill. That’ll show me where you stand.”

“But—incarceration? This place Persephone … What exactly is it?”

Ryan sighed. “I should have let you in on it. Quite a while back I did a deal with Augustus Sinclair to build it—it’s out on the edge of Rapture. Right over that … big crevice—just in case. It’s … a facility for isolation and interrogation. Something between a mental hospital and a penal institution. For political enemies of Rapture.” He was busying himself with the tapes—seeming embarrassed. “Some of this woman’s followers are free—and some aren’t. We’ll find them, in time, and they’ll have their own little cells. There are various shades of malcontents in Persephone…” He seemed to realize he was fussing mindlessly with the tapes and put the box aside. “As for water-pressure issues—I’ll have Sinclair speak to you, give you reports on all that. He has a maintenance crew to deal with any … internal problems of that kind.”

He doesn’t want me to go there, Bill realized. He doesn’t want me to see what it’s like …

Something else occurred to Bill, then. There was a chance, after all, he could see the inside of Persephone—as a prisoner. It could happen if he said the wrong thing. That’s what it was coming to, in Rapture. And he couldn’t risk getting put away—not with Elaine and his little girl needing him …

Bill let out a long, slow breath to calm himself. When things cooled down, maybe he could persuade Ryan to close Persephone.

“Okay, Mr. Ryan,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “I reckon you know best.”

Persephone Penal Colony

1955

Simon Wales felt a powerful mingling of superstitious awe and pride as the guard let him into Sofia Lamb’s cell.

She was waiting for him on her neatly made bunk, sitting up straight, hands folded in her lap, her blond hair back in a bun. She looked thin, hollow-eyed. But the transcendent spark was there.