BioShock: Rapture

But Andrei cannot look away. The tall militiaman tucks Dmetri’s papers away somewhere and then gestures with his rifle.

Dmetri shakes his head, waving his train tickets. The train shudders, a whistle blasts…

Vasilisa tries to pull him toward the train. The soldiers wave their guns. Andrei remembers Dmetri coming to the feast for his tenth birthday, smiling, bringing with him a wooden saber carved as a gift.

The train whistle screams. The guards shout. One of them jabs at Vasilisa with his rifle, knocking her to her knees. Dmetri’s face goes white as he grabs at the rifle barrel—the man turns it toward him and fires.

The train lurches into motion—as Dmetri stumbles back. “Oh, Father!” Andrei cries out.

“Look away, boy!”

But Andrei can’t look away. He sees Vasilisa flailing at the soldiers, weeping—and two more guns fire. She spins and goes down in a heap atop Dmetri. The two of them lie there, dying together on the platform, as the steam from the train cloaks them, and the past cloaks them too. The train, like time, moving away…

* * *

Andrew Ryan shook his head. “Workers Militia,” he muttered bitterly now. “A revolution for the poor. To save us all… for a cold death on a train platform.”

And that had been just the beginning. He’d seen far worse things traveling with his father.

Ryan shook his head and looked at the pictures of Hiroshima. Madness, but no worse than the devastation of Socialism.

His dream had always been to build something that would survive anything the little madmen could throw at him.

If only Father could be there to see it rise from the shadows, magnificent, unafraid, a fortress dedicated to freedom.

Rapture.

PART ONE The First Age of Rapture

The parasite hates three things: free markets, free will, and free men.

—Andrew Ryan

1

Park Avenue, New York City 1946

Almost a year later…

Bill McDonagh was riding an elevator up to the top of the Andrew Ryan Arms—but he felt like he was sinking under the sea. He was toting a box of pipe fittings in one hand, tool kit in the other. He’d been sent so hastily by the maintenance manager he didn’t even have the bloody name of his customer. But his mind was on earlier doings in another building, a small office building in lower Manhattan. He’d taken the morning off from his plumbing business to interview for an assistant engineer job. The pay would start low, but the job would take him in a more ambitious direction. They had looked at him with only the faintest interest when he’d walked into the Feeben, Leiber, and Quiffe Engineering Firm. The two interviewers were a couple of snotty wankers—one of them was Feeben Junior. They seemed bored by the time they called him in, and their faint flicker of interest evaporated completely when he started talking about his background. He had done his best to speak in American phraseology, to suppress his accent. But he knew it slipped out. They were looking for some snappy young chap out of New York University, not a cockney blighter who’d worked his way through the East London School of Engineering and Mechanical Vocation.

Bill heard them say it, through the door, after they’d dismissed him: “Another limey grease monkey…”

All right then. So he was a grease monkey. Just a mechanic and, lately, a freelance plumbing contractor. A dirty little job screwin’ pipes for the nobs. Heading up to some rich bloke’s penthouse. There was no shame in it.

But there wasn’t much money in it either, working on assignment for Chinowski’s Maintenance. It’d be a long time before he could save up enough to start a big contracting outfit of his own. He had a couple of lads hired on, from time to time, but not the big contracting and engineering company he’d always envisioned. And Mary Louise had made it clear as polished glass she was not really interested in marrying a glorified plumber.

“I had enough of fellas that think they’re the cat’s meow because they can fix the terlet,” she said. A pretty girl from the Bronx was Mary Louise Fensen and raring to go. But not terribly bright, after all. Probably drive him barmy anyway.

The moment he’d got home the phone rang, Bud Chinowski, barking about getting his ass to an address in Manhattan, on Park Avenue. Their building maintenance was AWOL—probably drunk somewhere—and the Bigshot at the penthouse needed plumbers “fast as you can drag your lazy ass over there. We’ve got three bathrooms to finish installing. Get those witless wrench-jockeys of yours over there too.”

He’d called Roy Phinn and Pablo Navarro to go on ahead of him. Then he’d changed out of the ill-fitting suit, into the gray, grease-stained coveralls. “Limey grease monkey…” he’d murmured, buttoning up.