“I really must get around to taking that sign down,” Ryan said as he and Karlosky walked under the words
They passed through the double doors and walked across the polished floors, past the sculpture of Atlas holding up the world.
He glanced at his watch. He was half an hour behind time—the lights would dim for evening soon. The message from Suchong had been urgent: a crisis in ADAM production…
Ryan ignored the lab workers hurrying past, clipboards in hand, and hurried up the stairs, Karlosky close beside him. He rarely worried about splicers or assassins with Karlosky around—the man had eyes in the back of his head. He wondered if plasmids could make that literally possible.
They went through the sterilization air locks to find Suchong and Tenenbaum in a steamy lab, working over a sea slug in a bubbling tank. Frowning in concentration, Tenenbaum was using a pipette to draw an orange fluid from the sea slug’s horny tail. Ryan noticed that her hair didn’t seem to have been washed in days and her lab coat was splashed with stains, her nails black. There were blue circles under her eyes.
Suchong glanced up as they entered and gave them each a short bow. Tenenbaum withdrew the pipette and released its contents into a test tube. Ryan stepped closer to inspect the sea slug—the creature quivered in its bath of seawater, but otherwise seemed almost lifeless.
Ryan pointed at the sea slug. “Surely that’s not the last one?”
Suchong sighed. “We have a few others in a suspension. But they are almost gone. The fighting of the raid, all the chaos—we lost them. Damage to the tanks. If only you’d warned us…”
“Couldn’t risk that. You haven’t exactly earned my trust, Suchong, working for Fontaine.”
Suchong inclined his head in something that passed for regret. “Ah. Suchong very sorry. Grave mistake to work for Fontaine. I should have known—the intelligent man work for men with more guns. Always the better policy. I will not make that mistake again. You have my loyalty, Mr. Ryan.”
“Do I? We’ll see. Well, you sent for me and I can see the problem for myself. No sea slugs, no ADAM. Any suggestions, Doctor? What are we to do for ADAM? We have all these lunatic ADAM addicts running about… a whole industry could collapse. I’ve taken over the plasmids business—built the Hall of the Future to extol them. But if we run out of them—it’s all for nothing.”
Tenenbaum looked up from the test tube. “There is a way, Mr. Ryan. Until we can learn to breed more slugs…”
“And that is?”
“Many men are dying and dead in Rapture. But before they die, there is a… how would you say it, a stage in their metabolism of plasmids… in which they create a refined ADAM inside them. It is deposited in the torso. And we believe…”
She looked at Suchong, who nodded at Ryan. “Yes. It can be harvested. From the dead.”
Karlosky grunted and shook his head. But said nothing. Ryan glanced at him. It was hard to startle Karlosky, but it seemed they’d done it.
Ryan looked back at the sea slug. “You can get ADAM from the dead?”
Suchong removed his glasses and polished them with a silk handkerchief. “Yes. But there is a certain way to do this—the ADAM must be sensed, and drawn up into the syringe properly—and correctly transported. Little Sisters are best suited for that process…”
Tenenbaum shook her head. “But the girls are already… damaged. If we sent them to do the harvesting —who will protect them? They are…” She glanced at Ryan, then quickly away. “They are worth a lot of money. They will not trust ordinary guards… and we cannot trust ordinary men with them.”
“So for that,” Suchong said, “we have developed hybrids, our cyborg sea workers. Gil Alexander has made great progress with the Alpha Series—Augustus Sinclair has, ah, leased out this Johnny Topside from Persephone. Subject Delta—he is bonded with the girl we took from the Lamb woman. Eleanor Lamb.”
“Bonded?” Ryan asked, not sure he liked the sound of it.
“The girls are to be bonded to the Alpha creatures. They are to be… surrogate fathers. Little ones call them big daddies. Most charming. The girls will be conditioned to work closely with them.”
Tenenbaum made a small sound of acknowledgment. “They
The conversation was getting ever more peculiar. Ryan wasn’t sure he understood what they were planning.
But he knew a solution was needed. And he liked the neatness of harvesting ADAM from the dead. It closed the circle, somehow: an unexpected link in the Great Chain.
“What exactly will you need from me?” he asked, finally.
He stood outside McDonagh’s tavern, swaying, wondering how late it was. Long after midnight—lights had already been turned down. Couldn’t even make out his watch.
How much money had he lost at the card table, in the back room? Four hundred Rapture dollars at least. Poker. His downfall. Shouldn’t have drunk so much. Might’ve folded some of those hands before they got expensive. Maybe Shouldn’t have gotten in the game…
But his old gambling bugaboo was back—and with a vengeance. Only way he could get his mind off the mess that Rapture was becoming—and his failure to keep the splicers at bay. He was sure Ryan was starting to look at him like he was a useless old drunk.
Maybe he needed to get married. Get married again, a nice warm wife to keep him in line.
He shuddered.
He sighed and started off toward the stairs. He just had his hand on the metal door to the ramp when he heard a
Rogue splicers.
The corridor was twisting around from the booze and his mouth was paper dry. Too drunk to deal with this. “Gotta get backup…” He licked his lips and put his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket. But then again—he was top cop. Had to show it. “Fuck backup.”
He drew his gun, opened the door, took two steps through—and was slammed in the chest by the force of a Sonic Boom plasmid. The sonic shock wave made him stagger back painfully hard against the doorframe. A leering, goggle-eyed splicer in a ragged T-shirt was crouched behind a tumble of crates. “Gotcha big-badge! Or should I say big ass!” He pointed his hand to fire off another Sonic Boom, but Sullivan, sobering fast, slipped back through the door, taking cover to one side—and a cackling made him look up, through the doorway, to see a female splicer clinging flylike to the ceiling, wearing only yellowed underwear and a brassiere, her long dirty hair hanging down like Spanish moss. She was pointing one grimy hand down at the Sonic Boomer and twirling her finger—a whistling sound became a windy roaring and a small cyclone appeared, whirling bits of trash, picking up the empty crates to smash them against the metal walls. “Ha ha haaaa!” she cackled. “Care to go for a
The Sonic Boomer yelled and tried to scramble clear, but the expanding Cyclone Trap plasmid caught him, jerked him off his feet, spun him like a ragdoll in the air—and dropped him with a thump. He yelled in outrage as
