BioShock: Rapture

barred window in the studded-metal door… and his head jerked back with the bang of a gunshot from inside.

Sullivan thought at first Cavendish was dead—but then he saw the constable was just missing part of his left ear, much of it shot away. Cavendish crouched down in the corridor, put a hand over his red-streaming ear, hissing with pain. “Fuuuuuck!”

A “tee-hee-HEEEEEE!” came from inside the cell. “Too bad I missed, could’ve improved your ugly fucking face to have a bullet hole through it, dog humper! I gotta recommend that one to Steinman!”

Sullivan cocked his pistol, moving in a half crouch down the row of cells. He ignored the bearded splicer in number 16, who taunted, “You see, if you’d given us our ADAM, we’d all be happy harpies, but now, right now, you’ve made us into saddy soddies, and sadness hurts, it hurts, going to hurt and hurt!”

It’s me that’s done the hurting so far, today, Sullivan thought glumly. He’d accidentally shot Harker. This teleport thing had him shaken. He saw now why Harker’d been so unnerved.

He approached the cell door obliquely, pistol raised, trying to peer in without making himself a target. There, the seminude splicer was relaxing on his back in a cot against the farther wall of the padded room. His naked genitals, spattered with dried blood, all too clearly on display. He had his left arm behind his head, his right arm up, and he was spinning the pistol on his index finger and singing a Rapture advertising jingle to himself, “Ohhh, the beer may be green, but it’s mighty keen; it satisfies a man, makes him feel grand; it’s Ryan’s own, Ryan’s own, Ryan’s… own… beer!”

On “beer!” the splicer stopped spinning the gun and fired it toward the barred window of the cell. The bullet struck a bar and ricocheted down the corridor. Sullivan ducked, though the bullet was already on its way by then.

He raised slowly up, only to hear that sucking sound and Cavendish yelling, “Down, Chief!”

He flattened belly-down on the floor—and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the splicer materializing over him to his right, the pistol pointed down to shoot him in the head.

A rat-a-tat echoed harshly in the corridor, along with the big thump of a shotgun—and the splicer was stumbling backward, stitched across the middle with blood-spouting bullet holes, right arm torn half off from a shotgun blast. Cavendish had gotten him square with the tommy gun, and Karlosky had clipped him good with the shotgun. Someone around the corner yelled in pain as part of the tommy-gun burst ricocheted down the corridor. Maybe the steel walls hadn’t been such a good idea.

Sullivan got up again, coughing with the gunsmoke in the small space. Yips and jeers and shouts of derision came from the adjoining cells. But the teleport splicer was twitching, gurgling in death.

“Well, we got him, but we lost Harker,” Sullivan muttered, turning to look at the dead constable.

“This is a whole new… how you say it? From baseball…” Karlosky said, looking down at the twitching splicer.

Sullivan nodded. “A whole new ballgame.” 

Footlight Theater 1956

Frank Fontaine took his seat near the stage in the small auditorium of the Footlight Theater. He was here to see Sander Cohen’s new cabaret production, Janus—Cohen promoted it as “a tragic farce about identity.” It was actually an oddball collaboration between Sander Cohen and the surgeon Steinman. But Fontaine’s mind was elsewhere—he was remembering something Ryan had said. Even ideas can be contraband.

Settling into the plush seat, Fontaine smiled to himself. Ironically, Ryan had sparked an idea with that little phrase. Spread the right subversive belief, it could turn this place on its head—could dump Ryan at the bottom, lift Frank Fontaine to the top.

Feeling overfull from his dinner, a little drunk from the wine, Fontaine glanced over his shoulder at the audience crowding into the small theater. There was Steinman, the surgeon, overdressed in a tuxedo, playing “author.” There was Diane McClintock, standing at the head of the aisle, in the doorway; she wore a low-cut red- beaded black frock, carried a matching beaded purse. She was frowning, looking at her diamond-crusted watch. Waiting for Ryan, no doubt—she was Ryan’s fiancee as well as his receptionist.

Two seats were empty right next to Fontaine—this might be a great opportunity. He stood up and waved to Diane, though he scarcely knew the woman. He pointed to the two seats, smiling. She glanced through the door to the lobby, then nodded briskly, her lips pursed, and hurried down to him. “Mr. Fontaine…”

“Miss McClintock.” He stepped aside so she could take a seat. “I’ve saved a spot for Andrew too,” he said.

“If he even shows up,” Diane muttered, sitting down. “He’s… always so busy.”

He sat beside her. “I understand someone might be announcing a wedding soon…?”

She snorted. Then remembered herself. “Oh—yes. When he… decides the time is right, we’ll make the announcement.” She opened her purse. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette… oh bother… I seem to be all out.”

Fontaine noticed that most of the purse was taken up by a book. “I do have a cigarette for you,” he said. “Complete with Fontaine Futuristics matchbook. Very stylish.” He held the case out; she took a cigarette, and he lit it for her.

“You’re a lifesaver…”

“Looks like you’re carrying books around in that thing—does it make a better weapon that way?”

She blew smoke at the ceiling. “No need to be dismissive of a woman’s desire to learn. I’m reading a Fitzgerald novel from the ’20s. The Beautiful and the Damned.”

He thought, What could be more fitting? But, winking at her, he said, “One thing I’m not dismissive of is a woman’s desires.”

She looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if thinking of bringing him up short. Then she gave way to a titter of laughter. “Oh gosh. That kinda remark, ‘a woman’s desires’—makes me feel like I was back working the club where Andrew and I met…” She glanced over her shoulder. “You haven’t seen him here, have you?”

“Afraid not.” Maybe he ought to let her know, obliquely, that he might be available to squire her if Ryan gave her the brush-off. She could be useful. “If he doesn’t show up, I’ll heroically offer you my arm, ma’am, and escort you from here—all the way to the moon and back.”

“It’s even farther to the moon than it used to be, down here,” she said. But she seemed pleased.

“Me, I kinda hope he doesn’t show up…”

She glanced back at the door again and then stepped on her cigarette as the curtains parted. “Show’s starting,” she sighed.

It took him a moment to recognize Sander Cohen, as made up as he was—and with another face entirely slung on the back of his head. Cohen was dressed in skintight Lincoln green, had an absurd mustache and beard, and a feeble little bow and arrows slung over his shoulder. He pranced to mandolin music in front of a painted forest backdrop and broke into a song about how he “loved to be in the Greenwood with my merry men, oh, my gay and merry men, my oh so happy men, and then came along that dreadful bitch known as Maid Marian, and OH how paradise has fallen…!”

His “merry men,” looking more like nearly naked Greek wrestlers, came dancing out of the wood, waving arrows and singing the chorus with him.

Oh Jesus wept, Fontaine thought.

Then the King of England came along, wearing a lion-blazoned cloak, a gold-painted crown, and a red beard that was coming loose from his chin. He brought Cohen to his castle and set him to be the new Sheriff of Nottingham; “Robin Hood” lost little time in assassinating the king—merrily stabbing him to the beat of a song—and then switching the face on the back of his head around to the front. The mask resembled the king; he dragged the body off and took the king’s place.

The one-act musical mercifully ended to a smattering of applause—although Dr. Steinman stood up, clapped lustily, and shouted, “Bravo! Bravissimo!”

Fontaine helped Diane into her wrap. Maybe he could get her to a bar. After a few drinks, she might