the spider splicer giggled.
“Two plasmids from one lunatic,” Sullivan muttered, trying to get a bead on her in the dim corridor with his gun. She suddenly dropped down, landing catlike, and spun to face him. “Puppet cop, cop it, pup! That’s you!” She made a gesture, and suddenly a second splicer appeared, almost her twin, in front of her and to one side. Sullivan fired convulsively—and the bullet simply passed through the flickering image.
She cackled again—and then looked startled, her eyes widening. She looked down to see a curved fish- gutting knife blade protruding under her breastbone, spurting blood. She toppled forward, dying, and the Sonic Boomer who’d stabbed her from behind leered… and gestured—
Dazed, he lay there a moment, staring at the ceiling, gasping for air—then he sat up… and looked through the open door, about four paces off at what he thought was the splicer, sneaking around in the shadows.
Sullivan got up, dusted himself off, put his gun in his pocket, and said, “Screw this.”
He turned and walked back to the bar.
Diane McClintock was on one of her long, solitary walks through Rapture. She knew it was dangerous. She had a gun in her purse.
She had four cocktails in her, too, and she didn’t much care about the danger. She was heading somewhere, in a roundabout way. Pauper’s Drop. But she couldn’t bring herself to go there directly. She was afraid Andrew might be watching her, through the cameras; through his agents. She had to take the roundabout route so he’d never guess she was hoping to get a close look at the man they called Atlas…
She strolled through the museum, the new Hall of the Future, with its videotaped displays glorifying plasmids—all quite ironic, considering some of the horrors plasmids had brought.
She passed onward. Footsteps echoing, she wandered through the livid colored light of Rapture; she rambled past pistons pumping mysteriously in wall niches, past the steaming pool of the baths, under iridescent panes of crystal, through high-ceilinged atriums of brass and gold and chrome, vast chambers that seemed as grandiose as any palace ballroom. A palace, that’s what Rapture seemed to her, an ornate palace of Ryanium and glass, swallowed by the sea—which was ever so slowly digesting it.
And sometimes it seemed to Diane that everyone in Rapture had already died. That they were all ghosts— the ghosts of royalty and servants. She remembered Edgar Allan Poe’s sunken city. She’d read all of Poe in trying to educate herself to impress Andrew and the others. Again and again she’d returned to
She sighed, and she walked onward, her head throbbing. Still half-drunk.
Acting as if she went toward Pauper’s Drop on a whim, she passed through the transparent corridor, and the metal door. Down a flight of steps…
Sullen-eyed tramps lolled against the walls of the buildings, under intricate scrawls of graffiti. They lay about smoking, drinking, talking—and looking at her with an unsettling interest.
Maybe it was time to take refuge in the Fishbowl Cafe. It looked civilized enough.
She hurried into the cafe, sat in a booth by the dusty window, and ordered coffee from the frowzy, gum- chewing waitress who already had the pot in her hand. “Sure, honey,” the waitress said, giving her brown curls a toss. “You want some pie? It’s seapalm pie, but they put a lotta sugar in it, not too bad…”
“No, thank you,” Diane murmured, wondering if she could ask this woman about Atlas…
The waitress bustled off to deal with a thuggish-looking man at the other end of the row of booths.
Diane McClintock sipped coffee, looking out the window, hoping the caffeine would stop the thudding in her head.
Risky being here. She could easily fall into the hands of rogue splicers. But her depression had been whispering to her lately,
Still, Rapture was in a time of relative peace, with Fontaine dead. She hoped it would last.
Atlas was said to come to Pauper’s Drop pretty regularly. He moved about undercover—he was “wanted for questioning” by Sullivan’s bunch. He was on the track to end up in Persephone for sure.
Andrew would hate her for coming. But that was part of why she was here. Atlas was a man with something Andrew Ryan was missing—a real heart.
She was startled from her fumination by a commotion outside. Several men with shotguns were shouting at the crowd of unemployed. They seemed to be getting them organized into a line. To her surprise, the ragtag crowd passively lined up…
Then a man came striding onto the scene, followed by several others carrying large baskets. The man in the lead somehow drew all eyes to himself. He was a handsome figure of a man with a fine head of hair, a mustache, a cleft chin, and broad shoulders. He dressed like a workingman—with a white shirt, sleeves rolled up; suspenders; simple work trousers; boots. But he carried himself like a man in charge. Yet there was no harsh edge of authority about him. His expression was kindly, compassionate, as he took a basket from the man behind him, began quietly passing out things to the people in line. The first one, a woman with gray-streaked hair and a lined face, a tattered frock, took a package, and Diane could read the woman’s trembling lips: “Thank you. Oh thank you…”
He spoke briefly to her, patted her arm, and then passed on to the next in line, personally handing out a pair of shoes; a sack that seemed to brim with canned goods.
Could this really be Atlas?
The waitress came to Diane’s tables, asked in a bored voice, “You want some more of what passes fer coffee around here, honey, or what?”
“What I’d really like…” Diane took a ten-dollar bill—with Ryan’s picture on it—and tucked it into the woman’s apron pocket. “Is to know if that man out there is who I think it is…”
The waitress looked around nervously, looked into her apron pocket, then nodded. With a lowered voice she said, “Him… he calls himself Atlas. Only t’ing I know: the lady lives down the hall from me wouldn’t have nothing to eat, weren’t for him. He’s helping people, that one. Gives out free stuff every week. Talks about a new order.”
The waitress hurried off, and Diane turned to stare out the window at the man called Atlas. He was gentle but powerful— the kind of man she truly wanted to meet…
She hesitated. Did she dare go out and talk to Atlas? Suppose Andrew were having her watched?
It was too late. There was shouting, an alarm on the concourse outside the cafe—constables were coming.
