market…”
“Do we even know for sure which plasmids are out there?” Kinkaide asked.
Sullivan shrugged. “Not for sure. I’ve got a partial list.” He searched his pockets, looking for it. “Got it here somewhere… Some are kinda black market; some Fontaine sells in shops. He’s selling EVE right next to it. Damned floors are littered with syringes… here it is…” He unfolded a wrinkled piece of paper.
Sullivan cleared his throat, squinted at the paper, and read out, “Electro Bolt—fires bolts of electricity. Can stun a man or kill him. Incinerate!—started with a plasmid you could use for cooking but now it’s sorta like a flamethrower that comes outta your hand. I have seen Teleport—not sure how we can control that one. It’s a big worry. I mean, Christ, how do you jail someone who can
“Ha, creeps,” Anna said, absently glancing at the transparent ceiling. “They do creep, don’t they? Good one, Chief.”
He looked at her in puzzlement. He hadn’t been joking.
“What about this Teleport?” Bill asked. “What do we do about the bloody Houdini Splicers? It can’t be legal.”
Ryan nodded. He didn’t trust it either. It weakened security—it might enable people to leave Rapture. He had security cameras and turrets set up at the only egresses to Rapture, to stop anyone unauthorized from leaving; he was in the process of installing more security bots. Some plasmids could make a joke of all those wonderfully engineered devices. “We’ll see what we can do to suppress that one.”
Kinkaide tried to straighten his tie and only made it more crooked. “I don’t understand the physics of these plasmids. Where are these new ADAM cells drawing all the energy from? If the splicer shoots out flame, does it come from his intestinal methane? Where does he get the raw materials? Does he lose a pound afterward?”
Bill looked at him. “You’re the boffin—no theories, then?”
Kinkaide shrugged. “I can only speculate that all this extra energy is being drawn from the splicer’s environment in some way. The air around us is charged, after all. That could account for the Electro Bolt. The mutagenic cells, once redesigned by ADAM, have a sort of secondary mitochondria that might provide specialized energy emissions. We don’t know what most of our genes do—some might be designed for these powers. Which might even account for tales of supernatural beings, genies and magicians and the like—but those mutations didn’t work out, you see. Perhaps because they tended to be burdened by negative side effects—like psychosis, facial excrescences, and so on…”
“Bit of a dodgy omen, that, innit, Kinkaide?” Bill pointed out. “I mean—if these mutations existed in the past, and they didn’t make it. Didn’t work out then, might not work out for Rapture, then.”
“Something in that,” Kinkaide allowed, nodding slightly. “But Mr. Ryan is right—if it’s possible to create plasmids, then it should be possible to perfect them. We can work out the bad parts. Just imagine having rational control of telekinesis or the ability to climb walls like a fly, to hurl electricity. To become… superhuman. It’s wonderful, in its way.”
“Maybe people could just learn to use ADAM without overindulging,” Anna suggested. “An education program.”
Finally, Ryan thought, Anna had said something useful. “Not a bad idea. We’ll look into that.”
“The side effects of plasmids,” Sullivan pointed out, “are the only thing keeping more people from buying ADAM. We fix the side effects, we’ll have superpowered people everywhere. We’ll
Bill nodded eagerly. “Chief Sullivan’s in the right of it—side effects or not, plasmids are just too dangerous. Rapture is made mostly of metal—but it’s complex, and that makes it vulnerable, fragile in some places. Daft bastards running around shooting fire, blasting lightning about—they could bring down the whole bloody house of cards!”
Ryan made a dismissive gesture.
“We’ll get the splicers under control. Meanwhile,” he added musingly, “this is all part of our evolution. Just growing pains.” He considered explaining fully. But they wouldn’t understand if he told them what he really thought. Greavy had understood, though. He’d understood the winnowing. The subtraction of weak links from the Great Chain; what they were going through in Rapture now was the heat of a welding torch, both destructive and constructive.
“It isn’t just the superpowered sons of bitches,” Sullivan growled, crumpling the list of plasmids in his shaky hands. “It’s the leadheads rampaging around the city, shooting guns at random. Faster reflexes from all that ADAM. We’ve had to kill four in the last two days. Sad thing is, they all had kids. Transferred to that new orphanage of Fontaine’s…”
“Fontaine,” Bill said, looking at Ryan significantly. “Got a finger in every bloody thing. Every kind of smuggling. He’s not just bringing in cheap hooch and Bibles anymore, guv’nor.”
Ryan grunted. “How’s the evidence looking on Fontaine’s smugglers?”
Sullivan sat up straighter, suddenly energized. “I’ve got enough to raid him, Mr. Ryan—then we’ll have the proof! I’ve got a witness to the smuggling ring, up in detention, under protection.”
“Then put it together,” Ryan said. “We’ll raid his operation and see what we get.”
Kinkaide shook his head. “All that charity stuff he’s behind. You’ve got to wonder what he’s up to.”
“He’s up to undermining me!” Ryan said bitterly. “Charity is a form of socialism! It’s too much like that Lamb woman. If they’re not working together—then they will be in time. Like Lenin recruiting Stalin. Stopping Fontaine stops this propaganda tool he calls charity…”
“What about this plasmids business?” Rizzo asked. “We don’t want to ban them or regulate them… so how do we control them?”
“Now that’s a good question, mate,” Bill said.
“I am about to announce a new Ryan Enterprises product line,” Ryan said, smiling in a way he hoped was reassuring. “A new line of weapons! Chemical throwers, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, better machine guns—we can use weapons innovation to counterbalance the splicers until we get ADAM perfected.”
Bill shook his head skeptically but said nothing.
“There’s something else,” Sullivan said, frowning. “I’ve got a source in Fontaine Futuristics—tells me about some kind of what they call
“He means
“Maybe that was it,” Sullivan said, unruffled. “Something about Suchong using phero… those things… to control the splicers, without the splicers even knowing it. Maybe spraying a chemical that makes them all show up in one place, so they cause problems for… well, anybody you wanted to cause problems for. I guess.”
Ryan scowled. “Control the splicers… with pheromones…” He was intrigued. But it was troubling too. Because Suchong worked for Fontaine.
Meaning that Fontaine in turn would eventually control at least some of the splicers. And it was becoming clearer: Fontaine was a predator. If you allowed him to grab that kind of power, he would use it to take Rapture over. Probably he’d do it behind a smokescreen. As Bill had warned, Fontaine could even partner up with Lamb’s followers, now that they were at loose ends.
It could mean the destruction of Rapture.
