BioShock Rapture

Sullivan scratched his unshaven chin. “We worked out that the stuff’s probably being smuggled in one of the fuel tanks. They’re refilling their fuel way more often than they need to. Meaning they aren’t carrying as much fuel as they should. Something’s taking up that fuel space.”

A voice was crackling from Sullivan’s handheld radio. “Ready to go, Chief!”

“Okay, Grogan, we’re coming down,” Sullivan said, speaking into the radio. “Soon as we’re there—we hit ’em!” He stuck the radio in a coat pocket, hefted his shotgun, and said, “Let’s go!”

Sullivan led the way; they followed him down a series of stairs, through hatches and doors, past the wharfs—and into a passage that led to the sub bay.

Six constables, heavily armed, were waiting at the rusting door to the sub bay. Sullivan trotted toward them, signaling “go ahead” with his gun hand.

Constable Grogan raised a pistol in acknowledgment. He was a stocky, freckle-faced man with sandy hair and a bushy, rust-colored mustache. A badge glinted on the lapel of his suit. He threw the latch, opened the metal door with a shove of his shoulder, and he and the others rushed in. Sullivan, Cavendish, Karlosky, and Bill were close on their heels. Cavendish was grinning like a wolf; Karlosky, smiling grimly, pistol in hand; Sullivan, pale and grave. Bill started to move past Cavendish.

“Hang back, McDonagh,” Cavendish said. “Leave this to the real officers. We’ll call you to the front line if we need to.”

Bill had a mind to hand Cavendish his badge and tell him where to shove it, but he silently dropped back to the rear. He wasn’t eager to pull the trigger on anyone.

They ran across a bank of carved-out rock into a great, echoing metal room with its own ocean-water lake. The room smelled of diesel and ocean brine. A converted 312-foot Balao-class submarine, without the deck guns, rocked in a flat calm. Lit by electric lights on steel rafters, the hangarlike room was just big enough to contain the submarine and enough water for it to submerge in. To the left, through the translucent water, Bill saw underwater steel doors that led into the air lock and the open sea. Purportedly there was another, smaller side channel, along the way, for the bathysphere to take to Smuggler’s Hideout. A big yellow fishing net was folded up on the afterdeck of the floating submarine. A pontoon gangway ran from the stony verge just inside the door out to the rust-streaked vessel. On the side of the conning tower was stenciled:

RAPTURE 5

The constables were already running along the gangway. Bill was at the rear, looking nervously around. There was no sign of life, not much noise—maybe a slight purr of an idling motor from the sub. Then Bill caught a flicker of movement up in the rafters, beyond the glare of the lights. He leaned back, craning his neck to look, shading his eyes with a hand. He just made out a face up there, someone on a catwalk near the ceiling. Bill had seen the man with Fontaine before. Reggie, his name was, and he seemed to be speaking into a handheld radio.

“Sullivan, Cavendish—wait!” Bill shouted, stopping on the gangway. “There’s something wrong—someone’s up there.”

Sullivan hesitated just before the sub, looking around as if he suspected something himself. Cavendish and Karlosky stopped to look back at him in puzzlement.

Grogan was already on the submarine’s top deck with two other men. Others were scrambling onto the metal grating, rushing toward the hatch.

“Get that hatch open!” Grogan yelled.

“In the rafters, up there, Sullivan!” Bill shouted. But there was a groaning, a churning at the submarine’s aft. Vapor bubbled up, reeking of diesel; the water moiled and seethed …

The submarine began to descend. It eased forward as it sank, heading toward the underwater doors opening in the submerged wall. The unattached gangway rocked in the waves of the submarine’s descent. Water surged up over the vessel’s bow, rushing over the shouting men on the deck. The submarine picked up speed, suddenly spurting forward and down, as the conning tower dipped under the surface. The men on the deck were swept into the water, then sucked downward in the vessel’s wake, their screams quickly drowned out. The submarine angled sharply down, completely submerged now, sailing swiftly through the opened steel doors into the shadowy undersea tunnel. Several men struggled in the sub’s wake, deep underwater, silhouettes seen dimly in the water. They were like children’s toys going down a drain, drawn by the suction of the closing doors.

Bill squinted up at the ceiling again, raising his tommy gun for a shot at Reggie, but he was gone.

They fished the survivors from the water. Grogan hadn’t made it. He had drowned, in that tunnel somewhere.

Standing together on the stone verge just inside the door to the now strangely empty room—the sodden Sullivan, Bill, Karlosky, and Cavendish stared at the water, now calm, the gangway rocking gently on its pontoons.